Seto Kaiba

Couldn't tell ya... that was a bit before my time... Since at that point my first experience with anime was still a little while in the future, I didn't get a chance to observe how anime enthusiasts reacted to Robotech in the 90s. Of all the anime magazines I've collected as part of my research into Macross II: Lovers Again, only one of them actually mentions Robotech when discussing the history of the Macross franchise... Animerica Vol.1 #0. In that issue, Robotech is only mentioned briefly, and only then when it's relevant to Macross. The two brief mentions it gets are: #1. A brief blurb about Streamline's plans to release subtitled versions of Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada as part of the Robotech Perfect Collection. Interestingly, the Robotech episdoes which are intended to be the main purpose of that release are mentioned only in passing, and more as extra baggage than as something worth watching. #2. An even briefer mention of Robotech as an ungainly mishmash of Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada that enjoyed a brief moment of success in the US before bombing spectacularly, done as an aside in the featured interview with Haruhiko Mikimoto.

Okay, poor choice of words on my part... but no poorer than calling it "free TV". I'm talking about regular broadcast television which is supported by commercial endorsements. It's not "free" by any means, it's all supported by advertising revenue. But that's exactly the point... that the shows failed to gather any kind of significant following during their limited runs on broadcast television, and that it was the cable channels decision to run anime that really took anime from an obscure niche market to something that most people are at least passingly familiar with. Realistically, none of the shows you listed did much of anything as far as giving anime mainstream appeal in America. Those are relics from days gone by when most people didn't even know what anime was, and the industry was almost an underground outfit. Those shows didn't have much of any influence on the industry because nobody gave a toss about them back in the day. They came before the anime craze the cable providers started in the late 90s. Just look at Robotech... even during its initial broadcast run it was a poor performer and was all but eclipsed by the Generation 1 Transformers series. Carl Macek himself even attributed the failure of Robotech: the Untold Story to, among other things, being completely overshadowed the the release of Transformers: the Movie. Saying that old shows like Robotech were what got the ball rolling and helped give anime its current level of recognition is nothing short of absurd. They weren't what made the public sit up and take notice, and most of them aren't remembered fondly, if at all. It's the stuff from the late 90s that deserves credit for making the anime industry more accessible.

Part of that is, no doubt, the result of a good deal of energetic fornication on the part of the Space War 1 survivors and a good twenty years of mass cloningat the behest of the U.N. government. While we see a handful of Human-Zentradi hybrids take center stage in Macross, it seems a bit odd to assume they ended up on the rare side when 87% or more of Earth's population was Zentradi immediately after Space War 1's conclusion. It may simply be that there is a significant percentage who are hybrids and the show simply doesn't call attention to them. By 2045, nobody seems to think it remarkable that a neighbor or a classmate is part-alien. Eh... if we take the contents of the Macross Frontier Pash! Animation File at face value then the 5th Generation colony ship Macross Frontier is operating at only a fraction of its maximum capacity. Taking that into account, even if the Zentradi population's resource demands are five times that of the micloned population, they still wouldn't be anywhere close to pushing the limits of the bioplant ship's resources. In war, however, the drain on resources and damage to the ship did eventually force them to miclone their Zentradi residents.

While I'm reluctant to bring any RT community shenanigans here for the obvious reasons, I just have to speak up briefly to voice my incredulous disgust. On a related side note, I took a look at the boards over on Robotech.com and RobotechX.com for the first time in about five months, and I'm having second thoughts about the idea of a Robotech Wiki. I know there are other, much less idiotic Robotech fans out there... but if these are the sort of people who'd be populating the project's community section, it's probably not worth the effort. Sure, the material is still worth documenting... but the PEOPLE. My god, the PEOPLE in that fanbase SUCK. Not to toot my own horn, but it looks like the illiteracy brigade's concerted effort to remove anyone with a functioning brain and a legitimate opinion from the fandom has, if anything, succeeded in driving the quality of discussion on the forums down to a level where describing it as "abysmal" seems overly generous. It's like everything went to hell in a handbasket as soon as the handful of knowledgeable fans stopped holding their hands and beating their skulls in with the facts. Hell, I thought Robotech.com was a crapsack even before I left, and now... the community has deteriorated to the point where I'm almost unwilling to believe it's the same site. I'm not sure what was more galling... the thread where they're making what they fondly imagine are profound arguments in favor of adopting Astro Plan as the next Robotech Saga, another "what became of the SDF-2" thread, the thread about how protoculture is like the force, or the threads hating on "Macross Purists" for not being shattered by Carl Macek's death and saying mean things like that he liked to take credit for the work of others and that he wasn't the anime messiah Robotech fans want to think he is. Seriously... if this is the standard by which the Robotech fandom is to be judged, I'm going to have to seriously rethink the idea of a Robotech section for my site. I didn't think it'd gotten THIS bad...

Well, to be fair... Genesis Climber Mospeada wasn't a bad show, it was a decent concept that ended up mediocre as the result of executive meddling. If they'd had the sense to keep the show's focus on ride armors instead of faffing about with transforming fighters in a transparent attempt to cash in on Macross's success, the show would probably have been more popular. As it was, they banked on it being the next big thing and it just didn't sell... Now, there's no arguing that Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross was just a turd. Even the show's This is Animation book is pathetic, to say nothing of the concept art contained within.

Eh... it might have been that way in your neck of the woods, but that doesn't necessarily hold true elsewhere. Personally, I'm looking at what you're saying and I'm seeing a largely indefensible argument. By any rational measure, the influence public access television had on the anime industry is somewhere between "minimal" and "nonexistent". The shows you've cited here were largely forgotten almost as soon as they went off the air, assuming anyone noticed them at all. Even into the late 90s anime was a poor performer of public access television. Even the popular titles of the day, Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon, failed to gain much of a following and were canceled. Anime didn't really gain a foothold on public television until the debut of Pokemon and similar titles around 1998. Even now, anime is still practically a nonentity on public television, with very few shows on the air, and almost all of them geared towards the youngest of audiences. The thing that really sold anime to the American audience was the material that aired on cable television. In particular, Cartoon Network's "Toonami" block was instrumental in establishing anime's popularity. It wasn't until the show moved to Toonami that Dragonball Z became wildly popular, and other popular titles from that period followed suit... shows like Outlaw Star, Gundam Wing, Tenchi Universe, 08th MS Team, Neon Genesis Evangelion, etc. If even Robotech could enjoy a modest success on Toonami in 1998, then it goes without saying that the original Macross would likely have done the same (if not better due to subsequent licensing of the other shows). All the same, there's no denying that the influence of shows like Robotech and hacks like Carl Macek are minimal, and that the real factor that helped establish anime as something marketable in America was the release of largely unedited faithful dubs on cable television. Precisely. Apart from a few brief attempts at revival in 1998, 2001, and 2006, Robotech has been a dead property since 1987. Ever since it failed to take off, all Harmony Gold has done with the property is use the rights that made the show possible to block legitimate licensing of the real deal to protect their dead horse.

Eh... personally, I'm inclined to say Macek's earlier account is the more plausible of the two on the grounds that it came to light before his trend of lying and stretching the truth began in earnest. Once he started trying to spin himself as the anime industry's answer to Gene Roddenberry and touting Robotech as the result of a grand creative vision he had from the very beginning, he buried the truth in the name of self-promotion and retroactive arse-covering. If what he said was true, and executive meddling was what really produced the overarching Robotech story, then that should be the real dirty little secret of Robotech's history... that the "generational story" Robotech fans are so quick to boast about is a sham, and everything (even the show's name) is the result of commercial necessity rather than creative intent.

Indeed... had Carl Macek managed to get Robotech out there as a sort of "anime masterpiece theater" showing separate, accurately dubbed versions of Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada under the banner of Robotech rather than the quickly slapped-together, badly rewritten mess we're familiar with today, his reputation (and Robotech's too) would probably be a lot less dire. If you're willing to take Macek at his word, he does claim that his original intent for the syndicated Robotech TV series was to produce the same kind of anthology-style series you're talking about in one of the Robotech Art books. Just as you would expect, the first thing Macek did after explaining that part of Robotech's history was to insist that the failure of the anthology show concept wasn't his fault was to immediately shift the blame elsewhere. The party he blamed was the network executives, who he alleges wanted a single overarching story rather than a loosely linked anthology series. Of course, since this is an anecdote from Macek himself it has to be taken with a modest little mountain of salt since the man made a habit of telling extravagant lies both to exonerate himself of the guilt of all his various failures and bad decisions, and to exaggerate the extent of his involvement and input into the "creation" of the series. (It's worth noting that this early account is in reasonably obvious contradiction with his later assertions that the overarching story was a grand, preconceived idea he had going into the project)

My sentiments exactly... the defense that Robotech gave Macross more exposure is not, in and of itself, even close to being enough to justify the way the source material was abused, and it comes at the price of having to forever remind people "no, we're not talking about the nightmarishly bad rewritten version". Admittedly that last part is less and less problematic as time goes on, since the general attitude towards Robotech could best be summed up as "anyone who tries to defend Robotech is either an idiot or an extremely unsubtle troll". No, I don't think it would. It seems a fairly safe bet that Macross would still have caught on in the US thanks to the licensing of Macross II: Lovers Again and Macross Plus in the 90s, though it would've taken longer for people to get into the series as a whole. It'd definitely be less embarrassing if the Macross name wasn't dragging around Robotech's lousy reputation and collection of failed sequel attempts...

That's a pretty fair summation of my reasons for continuing to keep an eye and an ear on the Robotech franchise... without having several friends who're active in the fandom, I probably would've said "to hell with it" and given up on it ages ago. I'd be surprised if they tried... the novels are one of the most divisive titles in Robotech, and one of the two writers from the original run is dead now... In Robotech... protoculture is like duct tape... you don't question it, and it holds the universe together. Basically it's whatever the writers decide it needs to be for that particular episode. General purpose plot spackle. In application, it can be anywhere from "magic" to "Minovsky particles", depending on how seriously you take the original explanation of how they generate power using it. If anything, that answer works a little TOO well...

Huh... that's definitely interesting. It certainly explains the ridiculous levels of production that allowed the main continuity U.N. Spacy to build up its fleet so fast and continually replace its VFs with newer models and keep the colony missions on schedule. Presumably there are more, since I do recall mention that the various colony fleets incorporate any satellites they run across/capture into their forces as well. Certainly far more prolific than Macross II, where capturing a factory satellite nearly intact was a BIG deal, and the U.N. only had like two...

And now, another post in Mike's ongoing series of "Too Long; Didn't Read". Part ? of π*10^8. Refresh your browser... my old avatar was an orange done up to look like Jeremiah Gottwald from Code Geass. My new one is Kirby after eating Judge Dredd. For a while, I used the "Ordo Hereticus - Heresy Begets Termination" stamp as a joke on the attitude that certain Robotech.com and RobotechX.com moderators have taken towards anything resembling a personal opinion. (The seal's still set as my personal photo if you want to see/use the recolored version) No, that's just something I did with Mr March to get some of the information I've been collecting out there for the fans to enjoy while IRL issues springing from the local effects of the economic recession have been running me ragged. I'm still working on it, (in fact, I'm almost done with my translation queue, just three magazine articles to go), and what's in the articles on M3 is only a fraction of what I've uncovered. Long story short, we're moving to a new domain because of the dick move our current webhost pulled with regard to their promise to keep their systems up to date (the current server load is so out-of-date that it can barely run basic CMS software). As part of the move, we're also expanding our focus to cover the main continuity as well, as a complementary resource for the Macross Mecha Manual, which will also be making the move with us. Basically, we're tryin' to make ourselves into a sort of "one-stop-shop" for Macross information... with the exception of the Macross II stuff, the focus of my coverage will be the characters, story, setting, music, etc., while Mr March's Macross Mecha Manual covers the mecha exhaustively. The expanded project is semi-jokingly called the "Macross Galaxy Guide", and will be (is) on a different, much more potent server. I just have to get through the next week or so, then we can start getting things set up. Eh... I disagree. Here's why: You're assuming that the Robotech die-hards are rational people. If they were rational people, then they wouldn't be die-hard Robotech fans, would they? If they were, they would've abandoned the Robotech franchise as an outfit that'd hit rock bottom with no prospect for recovery either in 1987 when word got around that the Robotech: the Untold Story movie and Robotech II: the Sentinels TV series got the axe, or in 2000 when Robotech 3000 sank without a trace and saw the removal of the terminally inept Carl Macek from the creative directorship. They would not have stuck with the franchise for 25 years when it consistently failed to produce anything that didn't suck. You see, the Robotech die-hards are strange, alien creatures with completely foreign concepts of "fun" and "entertainment" and a tenuous grip on reality that lead them to think things like Shadow Chronicles are actually good cinema, and that Robotech is the internationally renowned blockbuster Harmony Gold says it is. If starving them for content was enough to drive them away from the Robotech franchise, our problem with them would've solved itself at least a decade ago. Bricks were shat.

Thanks! Excellent work as usual... VERY informative piece (at least for me). I'm particularly digging those more realistic fighter capacity numbers. Having their roles in fleet tactics spelled out is also quite nice.

Okay, now THAT is a good question... one with a long answer, but a good question nonetheless. This might venture into tl;dr territory, so please bear with me since the explanation's somewhat complicated. As you've said, it's certainly no secret that I don't have a whole lot of use for Robotech these days. It's not that I hate the show... it's that I hate what the show has become, what it stands for, and the sort of asinine behavior it brings out in its fans. To me, Robotech is a relic of a bygone era in the American anime industry. It's an interesting little historical curiosity that we can all gawk at and wonder what the hell the people responsible for it were thinking. Putting aside its alleged and highly debatable influence on the formation of the anime industry, the show itself itself aged about as well as unrefrigerated milk, and as a result has a weird retro camp aspect that at least lends it a little entertainment value. As I see it, the Robotech story had potential once, but that potential was wasted by the terminally inept, generally unimaginative, and incredibly dishonest people in charge of the show. The general antipathy I display for the Robotech franchise is largely the result of what the show has come to stand for... ignorance, deceit, and abuse of the source material. I find it particularly appalling that, rather than be honest about the show's origins, both Carl Macek and Tommy Yune opted to treat it as a "dirty little secret" and made an effort to convince the fans that the shows which make up Robotech are inferior and have no value outside of their adapted versions. In short, I don't hate Robotech so much as I hate what Robotech and its fanbase have become and what they now stand for. Now, as to why I'm planning this particular endeavor... (in no particular order) Honestly, I suppose the main reason is that one of the chief reasons Robotech fans annoy the crap out of people isn't that they're apefaces (most aren't), but rather that they're just plain ignorant. One of the things you'll notice just in looking at Robotech.com and RobotechX.com is that many Robotech fans are pretty clueless about Robotech itself. This ignorance leads them to say and do stupid stuff that gets on people's nerves, and thus perpetuates the lousy reputation of the online Robotech fanbase. Remedy the ignorance, and you not only sweep the rug out from under the feet of people like Maverick, MEMO, and dougbendover, you also give them fodder for intelligent discussion (which you'll no doubt agree has been sorely lacking for a good while now) and the means to stop acting like idiots. It also can do rather a lot for the non-fan who is curious about this "Rowboattech" thing they've heard about but can't find much of any information on. Another reason I'm doing it is that, like as not, Robotech is a part of Macross's history. It might be a part we aren't particularly proud of (or one that we'd like to bury forever like evidence of some dreadful crime), but it's still had an affect on Macross and the way Macross is perceived by western fans. Some of it is, yes, that I made a promise to a few decent Robotech fans of my acquaintance that I would try to put together a community site for them free of the bullshit, politics, and witch-hunting that are all Robotech.com and RobotechX.com are really about these days. And yes, some of it is nostalgia. Robotech was one of the first anime titles I was exposed to, so I do have some fond memories of it.

Okay... you've got me there... but let's remember that the majority of fans aren't that goddamn stupid, and just end up getting caught in the clusterfart of insane theories bouncing around Robotech.com. This isn't a project for the die-hard nutjobs, it's something for the everyman.

Okay, I can appreciate the desire to be helpful... but opening with the suggestion that the whole project is a waste of time can't really be called help. Contrary to what you asserted, the project is not fan-fiction (as it relies on the most stringent fact-checking possible and virtually indisputable logic insofar as continuity), nor is it an unnecessary endeavour as our pal Einherjar asserted, since the niche it would fill has, in point of fact, never been filled before, and Robotech has yet to provide any kind of comprehensive official information source. The closest they have is a reference written for someone's fan-fiction series... the Unofficial Robotech Reference Guide, which makes no secret of the fact that it was never intended to serve as a reference for the official continuity. Because then I'd be arrested for mass murder after all the Robotech basement-dwellers who spend their copious free time trying to make me care that they badmouth me on their podcasts overexert themselves and suffer fatal heart attacks due to going decades without exercise. I could maybe get away with it if I convince them there's a Geocache in an active volcano somewhere and write the whole thing off as voluntary virgin sacrifice to a volcano god. Perhaps, but you know as well as I do that the only part of this site that the mods actually care about fostering actual discussion in is the toy section. Everything else is moderated into a borderline catatonic state. Context would've been nice in the initial post then. Really, I would've been more interested to get feedback on my attempt to impose some sense of logic on the various Robotech stories, but someone decided to fixate on "a wiki is a bad idea" instead.

Oh my, I'm sorry if we're boring you... while I realize that it must be upsetting for you to see something as unusual as someone having a conversation that isn't about toys on this forum, perhaps you could do the mature thing and ignore the thread if you don't like the subject matter instead of your usual tack of calling attention to yourself and/or making a fuss about how you don't like it? After all... this isn't 4chan.

Which just increases the chances of human-Zentradi interbreeding as the human population grows. Certainly by 2059 in Macross's main continuity and 2092 in Macross's alternate continuity, nobody seemed to find Human-Zentradi hybrids unusual or remarkable. Such racism was certainly present in the survivors of the Space War 1 generation, even as late as 2040. The general in charge of Project Super Nova seemed to think Guld was untrustworthy because of his mixed heritage, and said as much directly to Guld's face during that inquiry after Guld shot up Isamu's YF-19 using illicitly-loaded live ammo during a blank round test sequence. Once news of the Zentradi uprising on Gallia IV came to his attention, President Howard Glass had started to say something untoward about the Zentradi before being reminded that he should be careful what he says by Leon.

Well, if the Compendium, The Two Lost Years, and the various other sources around are anything to go by, there ought to be plenty of half-breeds running around. One would expect, by 2059 or so, that pure humans would be a minority among the general population due to two generations worth of interbreeding. Between Perfect Memory and the Compendium, the situation after the war looks to have been a population of ~1 million humans and ~8 million Zentradi. At that point, it's all down to "how many Zentradi had kids with humans", and how many all-Zentradi families there were.

Okay, since this line of reasoning is apparently a mystery to you, I'll go ahead and explain AGAIN... Let's examine the actual substance of your argument here... you've consistently asserted, on the grounds that most of Robotech is "out there" on the internet, that making information about this material accessible on a reference site would be a waste because it's "work people really should be doing themselves". You have quite literally suggested that, rather than having a readily-accessible reference site where Robotech fans and casual viewers could find answers for their questions and learn more about the universe(s), each and every fan or casual viewer with a question ought to just download each and every title in the expanded universe, read them all, and figure out the answer on their own. To be frank, you've spent four or five posts telling us that reference sites are a waste of time and a bad idea, and that all fans ought to seek out the information on their own and decide what's what for themselves. That's just STUPID. Tell me, is a site like Memory Alpha, Wookiepedia, or the Macross Compendium also a waste because that information is "out there" in one form or another? You're clearly saying in this most recent post that such sites are a good thing for the fandom and the casual viewer... yet you've objected to the idea of a Robotech Wiki in this thread no less than three times in forty-eight hours. What you're saying now seems like a 180 from your previous position. Y'see, this is the whole goddamn point that's somehow not getting across. For example, if a fan is curious about some aspect of the novels, the comics, etc. and they just want a quick answer to their question, then it's incredibly stupid to expect them to download and sift through a sizable body of material they have no interest in just to get their question answered when you could have a Wiki or something along those lines where they can find their answer in seconds and with minimal hassle. With the information accessible to everyone, and not just those determined or devoted enough to build a private collection of this crap, you cut down on a lot of idiot repeat questions and crackpot theories, the fans can learn more about the various aspects of the franchise and decide whether or not they want to explore those parts for themselves, and casual observers can explore the universe and learn about it without having to register on a BBS and get frothed at by delusional fruitcakes like Rhade, Sanman, Maverick, and MEMO. The reason I used Wookiepedia as an example was, as should have been immediately obvious, it's the same goddamn principle in action. Same damn thing, just for a different sci-fi franchise. I'm not sure where you ran away with the idea that it wasn't going to be expansive, since I never said that. What I did say was that, rather than write the damn thing myself, I'm gonna provide a set of guidelines for the project and leave a good portion of the actual writing to fans who are experts on particular parts of Robotech. It covers not just the core stuff from the movies, but the expanded universe too, and it does so in a way that is still accessible to the non-fan or the casual fan. That's the goal here... Really, I'm not seeing what you're doing as analytical or realistic... if you were being analytical or realistic, it wouldn't have taken three verbal bludgeonings from me to figure out that reference sites are a good thing and that expecting the fans who just want a simple answer to a simple question to read the entire expanded universe to get it is unreasonable in the extreme.

So what's stopping you from taking a few Japanese courses at your local community college and doing the translations for yourself you lazy loafer? Seriously though, I realize it's somewhat unreasonable, but the point stands. Even if the stuff gets translated, by your logic we should just scatter the translations to the four winds and let you lot search for them on your own rather than collecting the information in a few convenient locations for easy reference. We could also approach this from an angle like that of Wookiepedia, where the expanded universe is just so massive, and so much of it is obscure, that only the most obsessive of Star Wars fans would be able to track all the relevant information they wanted without having someone condense it first. The average fan just DOES NOT have that much patience... that's why reference sites like Wikia have become so popular. It's a great way for the devoted fans to condense the vast quantities of material into references that make the series accessible to Joe Average. Sure, the same can be said for the materials of a bunch of franchises... but you're still missing the goddamn point. Who the fart has the time to wade through all that crap when they just want a quick answer to their question? Relying on the experts to answer questions on a BBS is a fatally flawed system because inevitably you end up answering the same few questions over and over again because it's a lot harder to search a BBS for answers than a Wiki, if only because in most cases you end up having to wade through torrents of worthless verbiage to get to the answer. Wading through all of the source materials looking for the answer is far too tedious and time consuming for most fans to bother with... for starters you have to actually have the material on hand, and then you have to thumb/scan through a few hundred comic books, or thousands of pages worth of novels looking for the specific fact you want. Tell me, which is faster? Trolling through a dozen novels looking for the fate of a particular character, or loading up a Wiki about the series and searching for that character's name? (Free hint, unless you're ASTONISHINGLY lucky, the Wiki is going to win the race every time). Okay, I see where you're coming from now... bitterness. Again, the point that you fail to grasp with laudable consistency is the simple fact that the average fan who doesn't know much (or anything) about the old comics, novels, etc. isn't even going to know where to start if they're looking to get an answer for their particular question about those sources. This latest pathetic line of yours that they ought to just Google for and download EVERYTHING to get the answer to one specific question is so incredibly asinine that I'm not even sure whether to take it seriously or not. Honestly, are you shitting me? If someone wants to know what the symptoms of the flu are, you don't tell them "Go to medical school and spend four years studying viral pathology", you look it up quickly online or hand the poor sod a medical dictionary where the answer is already distilled down to a level that a non-expert can easily grasp. If someone wants the answer to a specific question about a specific topic, telling them to go study the entire subject matter in depth and figure it out for themselves is just being the sort of unhelpful douche nobody wants to have around. Having an easily-accessible comprehensive resource like a Wiki or a reference site goes a LONG way towards cutting down on repeats of the same tired questions, and allows fans to find a common frame of reference for discussing the subject matter. Robotech fans often come off as ignorant because that's exactly what they DON'T HAVE. All they can do is draw their own conclusions because Harmony Gold can't be arsed to cover 99% of Robotech on their Infopedia. Seriously, the outpatients are out in force tonight... what the hell guys? The problem with your assertion is that Tommy plainly didn't think about it at all when it comes to defining what is and isn't in the continuity. His response to the question was essentially that he can't be arsed to sort it all out, and leaving everything completely ambiguous. I hardly think it unreasonable to include a title in the continuity if an unambiguously canon title recaps it and continues the story right where the reference being recapped left off. What you're arguing is something very much akin to saying Star Trek III was not related in any way to Star Trek II, despite ST3 following directly on from the events of ST2 and referencing it ad nauseam. Insofar as Prelude and the Sentinels comics, saying that tying the two together is fanfiction falls apart on the grounds that about the first two issues of the Prelude comic is material taken whole cloth with only minor cosmetic alterations from the final issue of the Sentinels comics. I think part of the reason I'm running into so much carping from the peanut gallery over this is that people here are so used to the idea of just slagging Robotech as a disorganized mess that they they never bothered to stop and look for any underlying logic in any of it. So, of course, the idea that there might actually be some (if possibly unintentional or the result of laziness) seems to have come as something of a shock... Since you asked, the target audience is not only the RT.com crowd, but also the casual fans and people who are just plain curious about this weird piece of anime esoterica that Harmony Gold refuses to just let go of. The general motivations are the same as those of the people who put together something like the Macross Compendium, Memory Alpha, Wookiepeida, etc.... making detailed information about the universe accessible to everyone and not just the die-hards who follow all of the expanded universe stuff.

Really, that much could be done with a simple FAQ on the Macross side of things... which is something we've been doing since the very earliest days of the project, back in ~2003 when it was a simple RPG site hell-bent on fixing all of Palladium's well-intentioned and/or ignorant misrepresentations in Palladium's Macross II RPG. Eh? Now there's an idea for an astonishingly short Robotech fan project... the only period in Robotech history that could be called the "glory days" with a straight face would be the original broadcast that started in March 1985 and ended four months later in June. Everything that came after was part of the franchise's embarrassingly long, slow slide into oblivion. Um... you say this as though it's a revelation, and I'm wondering why? Perchance, are you deliberately being thick? Yes, the information that could go into a project like this is available out there in one form or another. The same can easily be said for ANY fan site publication. After all, what are the Macross Compendium and Macross Mecha Manual but condensed versions of the printed materials? Why do the work people like you really should be doing for yourselves by providing all the information in those books in a condensed, easy-to-reference format? Are you saying that those of us who make the fan-subs and translate the artbooks should hang the rest of you out to dry because you're unwilling or unable to track down each and every rare art book from the 80s, or import every issue of Chronicle? Now, if we all adhered to your astonishingly poor logic, none of the Macross reference sites you take for granted would exist. Nor, for that matter, would Wikipedia and the multitude of Wikias. (Of course, I could carry this to a rather illogical extreme and point out that if everyone had this attitude about doing things for other people, we wouldn't have dictionaries, and the doctor at the emergency room would tell you to stop bitching and do your own damn stitches.) HONOES! Some Robotech fascist fanboys might not visit or contribute to a project created by someone they don't like! How could I have missed such an important, Earth-shaking revelation?! Surely the project is doomed because a handful of mentally-deficient internet tough guys don't think I'm Mr. Fred F***ING Rogers! How will any fan project or online community survive without a legion of gunmen holding high-caliber firearms to everyone's skulls, forcing them under threat of death to visit this and other sites?! Okay dude, now that I've listened to this appallingly lame reasoning of yours, I want you to do me a favor. Get a good firm grip on your hair, and pull your head out of your arse. It honestly sounds like you're afraid this goddamn Wiki will trigger some kind of Robotech fandom revival or some poo like that. Look... even Mark Hamill couldn't polish that turd, so I've got no chance of causing a Robotech comeback. Is the idea of me providing Robotech fans with their own equivalent of the Macross Compendium really THAT offensive to you? Was your entire family murdered by a Robotech box set or something? I can't imagine why you think I give a poo about the penis-puffing poppycock of three or four jackasses who see Robotech and Harmony Gold as a ticket to self-advancement, or that what they have to say would have ANY impact on the project whatsoever. In case you haven't noticed, not only are they not the entirety of the fandom, they don't even represent the opinions of the majority. The majority of Robotech fans are NOT the frothy-mouthed fascists who preach "Death to Macross Purists". There are a fair few good people in the Robotech fandom who would benefit from and enjoy a comprehensive Robotech reference site untainted by fan-fiction or Harmony Gold kiss-assery, and those are the people that the project is for. Um... at the risk of pointing out a potential flaw in your reasoning here... Tommy Yune directly referenced the old Waltrip Sentinels series in Prelude (picked up right where it left off, in fact), so we do have some reliable details about the life and crimes of Zor... who was, by all accounts, an astonishing dick with a penchant for putting off any thinking until a few decades after he acted. Is Harmony Gold helpful? Of course not. They're apefaces. Tommy Yune couldn't write his way out of a damp paper sack, and the rest of that crowd is no better. The last person they had who had a goddamn clue was Tom Bateman, and we all know what happened to him. They won't even update their official reference section or put together a coherent timeline based on their own work. Embarrassing for them, since in practice it's ASTONISHINGLY easy if you look at it logically.

Okay, nobody with half a brain would deny that Robotech is in extremely dire straits... but really, this isn't about any kind of support for the brand. Is the brand circling the drain? Definitely. Is that any reason to hang the good people in the fandom out to dry? No. I personally think Robotech's franchise needs to just die already... the magic is gone, and has been for the better part of 24 years now. It should be looked back on fondly as a reminder of the days when we weren't quite as sophisticated as we are now... like replaying a Duke Nukem game. It's tasteless and campy and horrible, but it maintains a sense of ironic retro camp that's weirdly compelling. Oh, of course it's not NECESSARY... but is anything fandom-related necessary? One of the main reasons that the Robotech fandom is as belligerent and ignorant as it is is because they DON'T have the kind of resources and the kind of solidarity we have in the Macross fandom. Most of them don't even have the wherewithal to figure out how to facilitate that kind of environment. Is giving them a chance to help curtail their ignorant behavior and do something nice for their fellow fans really that offensive to you? It's not like I'm taking time away from my work on Macross for this... the setup is like two hours tops, and then it's largely out of my hands. It's not pointless... if they enjoy it and get some use out of it, then it was worthwhile for those people. Like as not, Robotech IS a part of Macross history... it might be a part we're deeply ashamed of, and a part that breeds idiots like no other, but pretending it doesn't exist won't help matters either. The more they know, the less likely they are to act like idiots in the future. Now what MEMO's doing with his "Robotech Codex" is just stupid... he just doesn't have the pattern recognition skills to realize he's blundering blindly into the same situation Brian Mcafee's been stuck in for years.

I am... that's the main purpose of the new server we're migrating to. This Robotech business is far and away the smallest and lowest priority part of what we have planned. The main focus of the site will be what we're semi-seriously calling the Macross Galaxy Guide... a two-part reference providing general coverage of both Macross continuities. My focus on characters and settings should provide a nice complement to Mr March's exhaustive coverage of the mechanical designs, which will also be hosted on our servers just as it is now. If only it were that easy... so long as Harmony Gold thinks there's money to be made from milking the nostalgia Robotech fans have for their mangled version of Macross, Robotech will never simply vanish.

Which is why I, being the clever chap that I am, am essentially handing over the bulk of the tedious work on the Robotech expanded universe to those who are care enough about it to provide decent coverage for it... ;-) Eh... that would be an issue if my aim was to provide a comprehensive mechanical design reference for the Robotech universe(s) similar to what the Macross Mecha Manual does for Macross. In practice, no Robotech reference would be able to pull off that level of coverage, because few official sources simply don't provide that level of detail. The goal here isn't to bludgeon the reader with in-depth technical coverage about the mecha, but rather to provide balanced coverage of all aspects of Robotech. There aren't any obstacles like that to providing story summaries, production and publication information, and character bios, since that material is all readily available and just needs to be condensed into a manageable format. Insofar as mechanical details, it's a matter of taking what little official information exists (RT.com Infopedia, AoTSC) and building on it a bit based on what's shown in the animation and RTSC production materials. For the few designs which have no official coverage, that can be remedied easily enough using the same practices the writers of the few official Robotech publications used (basically, take the hard specs from the OSM and state the obvious for a paragraph or two).