Seto Kaiba

It's not the same design precisely, but it's close enough to be recognizable as a Tomahawk, and that's all that really matters. Like it or not, Harmony Gold does legitimately own the exclusive right to produce merchandise based on the designs of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series for sale outside of Japan. As odd as I know this sounds... Harmony Gold is behaving in a way which is neither unethical nor legally questionable. This is a fairly clear-cut case of someone violating their exclusive right to use those designs in merchandise outside of Japan, and they are well within their rights to send those cease and desist letters. I'm inclined to suspect this is a repeat of the problem with Catalyst Game Labs, where they green-lit the use of the "unseen" designs without being aware of the terms of the settlement in Harmony Gold v. FASA. As you pointed out, the trailer was an IGN exclusive, but I suspect the real reason they're going after the trailer with such vigor is that they want to get the infringing material out of the public eye while they meet with Piranha Games to demand the removal of the infringing design(s) in hopes that they can settle the situation without having to resort to a long, messy, and expensive legal battle. Of course, it doesn't really change the fact that their recent actions towards Battletech and Mechwarrior are essentially public relations suicide, since Robotech is a virtual nonentity by comparison.

Yeah... lawsuits like that are complicated and time-consuming, and as such are expensive as hell. Because of that, most of the time the companies Harmony Gold threatens with litigation usually bow to the pressure unless they think they have a really good case (like FASA did). So it's pretty rare for something like that to actually end with litigation. I'm betting they do exactly what Catalyst Game Labs did. Issue a statement saying said designs wouldn't appear in the game because of an unforeseen legal complication, and end it there without it ever having to go to court.

God no... the rest I could happily live with, but NOT an english dub. Bandai's english dubs are pretty bad on average... better to leave it subbed.

Yeah... I know. Seems like a waste to bother paying whatever ridiculous price they're asking for it these days just for the tactile (dis)pleasure of holding the disc in your hand, when you can watch (read "ignore") the movie on Hulu at no cost to yourself. I have to wonder how many cheapskate fans used flash movie capture software to download the movie off of Hulu. It's an occupational hazard of putting anything up as a flash video. I dunno, I haven't bothered going to Hulu to look. Yeah... these past few weeks have been a public relations nightmare for Harmony Gold, and it's all thanks to MEMO1DOMINION and Maverick_LSC (primarily MEMO, but we can't pretend Mav didn't have a hand in the whole misinformation business). I'm hoping that Steve is seriously considering cleaning house, and replacing both of 'em with moderators who have their heads screwed on straight. In related news, is the user "Tom Bateman" who is browsing this thread the "Tom Bateman" who used to work for HG, or just someone goofing off?

Imagine my surprise when I checked my inbox today and found that Steve is actually looking into the complaints about MEMO's behavior. I am a bit weirded out that of all the people who wrote to him to complain, apparently I'm the only one he took the time to write back to. I know my status at Robotech.com could best be described as "pet heretic", but I can't fathom why I was the only one he felt deserved a response. My Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles DVD is with the rest of my Robotech stuff... buried with all the other useless crap I can't convince people to stop giving me for Christmas.

No, but I can think of a few mental hospitals that might be interested in you.

Got a copy of Plan 9 from Outer Space in there too? Don't take all the credit... I'm named on that website too. Khyron_Prime labeled you, me, and two other guys the four biggest dangers to the Robotech fandom! Jaaaaaaaason! It's not working when I do it! I've been heckling the mods and disagreeing with them and even taking them to task via e-mail when they make stupid decisions, but somehow I've managed to remain unbanned through it all.

That's really all they ever do on SSL. It's Harmony Gold's propaganda mouthpiece, so they don't ever answer any questions that might be of use to anyone.

Poetic AND accurate... can't fight that. The problem with Maverick_LSC and MEMO is that rather than examine the evidence of the legal situation and then form a conclusion based on that evidence, they STARTED with a conclusion (that Harmony Gold can use whatever they want) and then tried to ignore or reinterpret anything that contradicted that conclusion. It's like arguing with a creationist, no matter how much evidence you browbeat them with, they're going to hold up their crackpot theory as the absolute truth. Pizza the Hutt is a whole other problem... if you ask me, the reason he hasn't gotten a permanent ban for his behavior so far has been because he's the only person in those legal threads who believes MEMO and Maverick's crackpot, provably wrong claims to be accurate. Of course, they're not going to shoot their own argument in the foot by banning the only person who believes them, no matter how poorly he behaves or how many rules he breaks. Because of that, he thinks he's been given carte blanche to do as he pleases and attack Macross fans for no reason. I get the feeling that kid's got some serious issues, and that he's defending Robotech so adamantly because he experienced real quality Macross (DYRL, Frontier), and it threatened to overwhelm his role-tinted memories of Robotech. So I think he's doing what he's doing to try and convince himself that he hasn't been wasting his time with Robotech. Since when have they cared about how things looked? They've always depended on one tried and true strategy to keep themselves looking good in their own eyes... whenever something goes tango uniform, they blame whoever they were working with at the time. For Sentinels, it was Matchbox. For Untold Story, it was Cannon Films and Idol Co.. For Robotech 3000, it was Netter Digital. For Robotech: Crystal Dreams, it was GameTek. How much y'wanna bet if the Shadow Rising movie goes under, they'll blame FUNimation (their old release partner), Warner (for holding the project up), or whoever they hire to animate it? It's pretty much ALWAYS been like that with Robotech fans... it's just never been this blatant. If you thought the new stuff coming out (whether it was the horrible comics, the mediocre novels, or the feeble sequel attempts) was great, you were a "real fan", and if you didn't, you were labeled a troll, a basher, a Macross purist, etc. The problem with the current state of affairs in Robotech is that even if the truth comes out, there will still be some people (like MEMO) who want to continue to believe the lie SO BADLY that they will make up other lies to try and somehow make the first lie true. Just look at how MEMO is trying to hard to find an excuse for the absence of Macross references in Shadow Chronicles.

That seems to be their default accusation these days. Either they're so dense they don't understand a simple concept like dynamic IP addressing, or they just want to try and trump up charges to get rid of people that don't follow the party line. Is your ban permanent, or just temporary? This, I think, is the real reason for your ban... Tommy must've let slip something the public wasn't supposed to know, and now Kevin McKeever is doing damage control by calling anyone who repeats Tommy's statement a liar. I don't think I'll ever get banned, really... and I don't think it'll be necessary. Lately, I've just gotten so sick of the paranoia from Harmony Gold about how the few remaining fans perceive the franchise, and the asinine behavior of the few remaining moderators, that I can't even muster the energy to get good and angry at these people anymore. With the current state of affairs, the Robotech franchise has fallen right off of my critical spectrum into the cold void of dispassionate loathing. It's like the reaction many people have when they see Paris Hilton... she's so obnoxious and disgusting that you just find yourself changing the channel without even having to think about it... it's almost a reflex. It's rapidly becoming that way for me and Robotech.com. Anytime I see a thread packed full of those same, few idiots who kiss Harmony Gold's ass all day, my first instinct is to close the browser or navigate somewhere else. Reading MEMO and Maverick's posts in the legal debate thread over there is a lot like watching the Detroit Lions play football. They CLAIM to represent you, but more often than not you're embarrassed just to be associated with them, and you keep hoping someone with a brain will take over. They've posted some of the worst, most misinformed crap that I have EVER read. The really horrible part is they're the only ones who can't see how ridiculous their arguments really are. For whatever reason, they actually think they have a case and that they know what they're talking about. These are the people who hold themselves up as the representatives of the fanbase... the veteran fans who are supposed to be the best examples of what the fanbase is all about. When that's all I have to look forward to by loading up Robotech.com, is my current attitude towards that site really that surprising?

Y'know, I'm really not that fussed about it. If it happens, it happens. I don't think it will, since I usually refrain from causing trouble over there, and I'm a well-known figure in the community known for helping new and old members alike, but if it does, it won't really be any skin off my back. In all fairness, there is one at least reasonably competent individual working on Robotech at Harmony Gold. Tommy Yune went to a top flight art school, and his early forays into comic books were actually pretty good. The problem is he's completely and totally out of his element trying to do sci-fi.

We're only talking about the Robotech version here... where the entire bridge crew (except Lisa, who was pushed into an escape pod) bought the farm during the final ep.

Common knowledge, yeah. Who are you referring to here? The construction of Robotech.com was contracted out to a design firm. You can't possibly mean Steve Yun, since his degree is in creative writing, and his only other noteworthy experience was a brief stint as a digital animator. Tommy Yune actually went to a really good art school... the problem is he just can't do sci-fi. He was fine s'long as he was doing someone else's universe (Speed Racer, Superman), but ask him to create original sci-fi content and you're out of luck. Yeah, that's Kevin McKeever for you. Shame so many fans aspire to repeat his feat of getting hired by HG by kissing as much ass as possible. Just look at MEMO. Tommy Yune did that one Buster the Amazing Bear series that was supposedly really good, but other than that he's done nothing noteworthy or remarkable. His time as Robotech creative director has been marked mostly by reuse of Sentinels concepts dreamed up by Carl Macek and the Waltrips. Everyone else's credentials are a cavalcade of mediocrity.

The weird part is it's one of those spontaneous injuries with no explanation, like Vince's broken leg in RTSC. She was on the bridge, and the battle damage was all at the prow. The bridge was pristine, but somehow she suffered massive internal injuries that kept her wheelchair-bound for a year and caused her to miscarry.

Yes, actually they did... in Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles. Lisa's originally an Admiral, and Rick's a Major General, but Rick takes over command (I know not how) after Lisa gets horribly injured (how, exactly is a mystery) when Edwards and the Regent attack the SDF-3 in 2043. She spends a year recovering from her injuries (which cause her to miscarry, so no Roy Hunter like in the old comics), and after that she resigns her commission, leaving Rick to command the REF, and joining the Sentinels Council as Earth's representative.

Just for yuks, I fired up WinDVD and fast-forwarded thru Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles and took some screen captures that best illustrate the movie's juvenile obsession with tits and ass. Those folks at Harmony Gold know their target market frighteningly well... the 30-something die-hard Robotech fans who've never seen a naked women without paying for the privilege, and the pocky-garling 12-17 year old Naruto fans who'll be in the same boat in a decade or two. So, with no further mucking about... enjoy my montage entitled "Let them eat (cheese)cake.. EDIT: I just noticed... the "boob windows" in Janice and Ariel's uniforms get bigger and bigger as the movie goes on...

When Alex died, nobody cared because it was so painfully obvious that he'd been marked for death that most of us were surprised he'd lasted almost the entire movie. He's like that guy in every horror movie who dies right after saying "Everything's going to be OK", or a red-shirted ensign beaming down to a hostile planet with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy... you just KNEW he was going to die. Yeah, Tommy's background in the American comic book industry really shows in the character and mecha designs of Shadow Chronicles. All of the men, regardless of age, are absurdly buff and handsome. All of the women, regardless of age (or species), have perfect hourglass figures and improbably large, gravity-defying breasts. The aliens are all your standard DC/Marvel fare... evil robots, anthropomorphic animals (dogs, bears, etc.), amazons, rock people, coneheads, etc. The mecha and ships are all boxy, with Star Trek-style touchpad controls. I could go on like this for ages...

Yeah, they certainly did arrange a lot of the shots to better show off the "assets" of Janice, Ariel, and Maia. My favorite by far is the one where Louie and Janice are talking in Louie's lab and Maia comes in to see him, and he peeks out around Janice's ass (which takes up like 2/3 of the screen). True to form, despite having essentially copied the movie's tone, several plot elements, and many of the mechanical designs from Battlestar Galactica, those elements taken from Carl Macek's Robotech II: the Sentinels are still imitating Star Trek. Did anyone else notice that Janice is a fairly obvious carbon copy of Data, right down to the way she talks? Heck, they even hired an actress from Star Trek to voice her. I really can't say that she's the most interesting character, since 99% of her purpose was sex appeal (note the slurmty dress from the lounge scene, and the multitude of T&A shots of her throughout the movie... more than any other character). Still, that she easily ranks in the top three doesn't bode well for their staff of writers. Take note, as with many other characters who are "new" in Sentinels and Shadow Chronicles, an arbitrary relation to a more important, pre-existing character is crucial to that new character's appeal. Here's a breakdown of several of the more blatant ones: Vince Grant: Originally created for Robotech II: the Sentinels, as the father of Masters Saga bitch-boy Bowie Grant, and brother of Macross Saga bridge bunny Claudia Grant. In his first appearance, a two-dimensional cardboard cut-out of a character, and time has not improved him. Marcus Rush: New character created for Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. Brother of Marlene Rush, the dead girlfriend (and motivation du jour) of New Generation leading whiner Scott Bernard. Maia Sterling: New character created for Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. Sister of Masters Saga leading lady Dana Sterling, daughter of Macross Saga characters Max and Miriya Sterling, and de facto replacement for Sentinels character Aurora Sterling. Janice M2: Nominally a new character created for Shadow Chronicles, more accurately a literal reincarnation of Janice Em, a character from Robotech II: the Sentinels. Which was, of course, entirely the point of having them there... to give the movie some kind of appeal for the fans of the original. If they hadn't done that, 9/10ths of the fanbase wouldn't give a toss.

Yes, but as indicated by the site polls and the general content posted before, during, and after the Shadow Chronicles release, the vast majority of the remaining fans are quite hung up on Rick Hunter. Finding out what happened to him is one of the major selling points of the movie, and features prominently in the marketing blurb. No chance of that happening... Tommy Yune knows full well how much the majority of the fanbase is hung up on Rick. He went out of his way to absolve Rick of the potential guilt of having ordered the destruction of Earth in Symphony of Light by having him become the unwitting pawn of the Haydonites. They'll NEVER let him die, because when he dies, they're all out of ideas. You'd be a fool not to. Just look at the shitstorm we got when McKeever accidentally said the Shadow Chronicles sequel was on hiatus... he had to publish a retraction in half a dozen places and he's STILL trying to convince people they haven't put the movie on the back burner. They clearly have come to expect that the fans will wait however long it takes for them to squeeze out another feeble installment of Robotech. Why bother? The fan-service will make the movie more appealing to the demographic they're aiming at than a well-written plot with excellent character development will. They're aiming for the 13-18 pocket-mining demographic, that much is perfectly clear. As has been pointed out many times already in this and other threads, why should Harmony Gold bother putting the effort into making something good, when something mediocre will still be snapped up eagerly two or three times over by the die-hards who form Harmony Gold's main consumer base. They've demonstrated beyond dispute that their strategy for Robotech's future is to make new products with the minimum possible expenditure of effort and money, and then sell them at a premium to the content-starved fans.

Wham's quotin' me, he just didn't use the quote button for some reason... I can't imagine why Wanzer would clam up about Macross II... he's the one who helped me find most of the old Palladium books, and helped get the ball rolling on the project of fixing the errors in them that eventually mutated into my comprehensive reference for the entire Macross alternate universe continuity. Okay, yeah... usually it stops being criticism and starts being trolling right around the time they dust off the ad hominem attacks. Still, best to just report them to a moderator and ignore them thereafter. "Don't feed the troll" as the saying goes. I hope you fully appreciate just how rare sentiments like these are in the Robotech fanbase. These days, the few remaining vocal fans of Robotech generally adopt the pretense that Robotech is a flawless masterpiece which exceeds the potential and quality of the original works in every way, and that anything based on it must therefore also be a flawless work of art, and react with extreme hostility whenever anyone challenges that assertion. Well, yes, but all indications are that Harmony Gold set the bar astonishingly low for Shadow Chronicles. The budget was minuscule, so sales were virtually all profit.

This much is laudable... 's not really a section... it's just the one thread, which is only grudgingly tolerated by the administrators. Yes, but can you say with absolute certainty that those users who you had an issue with on Robotech.com were there for the sole purpose of bashing Robotech? After all, every now and again even I get accused of going over there to bash Robotech (albeit, the ones doing the accusing are usually the ones who think Robotech is somehow above criticism by mere mortals like myself), and yet I spend most of my time there helping people, answering questions and the like. Also, what you may consider "bashing" of the series may just be your interpretation of something that was intended as legitimate criticism (which my criticisms of Shadow Chronicles often are). I say this because there's been a recent, SEVERE upswing in Robotech fans labeling anything they don't agree with, and particularly anything that shows Robotech as somehow less-than-perfect as "bashing", "trolling", etc. I'm all for keeping an open mind, but coming here JUST for the Robotech legal thread kind of defeats the point of it being a Macross site. It's good to know that you're not going to limit yourself to just this thread. Since I've never given King of the Hill the time of day, I had to look the character up to see what you were talking about... and I'm not sure if I should be offended or not. We're working on it... problem is I can't translate fast enough to keep up with the queue of incoming stuff. I've got a bunch of new material on the VF-2SS put together though, and I'm working on the CSS-based layout for the main articles. (Finally figured out why the heck the Super Armed Pack can cram so much stuff into such a small space) Y'know, I didn't even notice until you'd pointed it out to me the other day... lol, surely you jest... the fact that Macross Frontier is one of the most heavily-torrented fansubs in the world right now can't possibly have anything to do with it. I don't think Wanzerfan belongs in that group... I know for a fact he's a Macross II fan. In fact, he's one of the original members of my Macross II site, from way back in '03 when it was just an attempt to fix the screw-ups in the Palladium RPG.

Good luck with that... you'll probably have an easier time convincing the entire Harmony Gold "creative staff" to commit seppuku. There wasn't much original about the "original" series, for the obvious reasons, and most of what came after just imitated whatever mainstream sci-fi series was popular at the time. Robotech II: the Sentinels was modeled on Star Trek, Robotech 3000 was modeled on the generic CG action shows of the late 90's (Roughnecks, ReBoot), and Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was modeled on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Even many of the comics stole stories, characters, and mecha from other shows. The only parts of Robotech that can honestly be called original with a straight face are probably the McKinney novels... and we all know how much the majority of the fans love them. Wanna bet? When Rick Hunter dies, that will be the end of Robotech. A great many fans only bought/watched the Shadow Chronicles movie because they were promised that Rick Hunter would return and somehow become relevant to the story again. Take him away, and you take away the reason most of the fans were still watching.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if that were the case... It's common knowledge that the "Macross Saga" is far and away the most popular installment of Robotech, and that many of those who want to see Sentinels or the Shadow Chronicles continued feel that way because they want to follow the adventures of the "Macross Saga" cast, rather than the less-likable berks who came after. If the fans found out that Harmony Gold and Warner Bros couldn't use much of the "Macross Saga" for future works, it would almost certainly mean a massive drop in interest in future Robotech shows, and possibly a massive drop in interest in Robotech itself. Just look at the distribution of products produced since 2001... well over 3/4 of it is Macross-related... toys, apparel, comic books, statues, you name it. Southern Cross is almost nonexistent in their merchandise line, and Mospeada is a token handful of products compared to the huge amount of Macross stuff they've made. Even the sole New Generation comic "Robotech: Invasion" had to have a Macross-related mini-comic about Mars Base and the Zentradi in each issue to make sure it would sell. For all the empty talk about how Robotech is a whole greater than the sum of its parts, the reality of the merchandising indicates that Robotech has largely been coasting on the success of Macross, and that without it, they have little in the way of future prospects. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Steve, Tommy, and Kevin are lying... their remarks are, as far as I can tell, truthful. Deliberately misleading, yes, but still truthful. Remarks like "we have all the international rights" and "we own everything Robotech" give the average fan the mistaken impression that Harmony Gold has the right to do whatever they want with all the content of the original works as well.

You're probably in the wrong place then... this IS MacrossWorld after all... Feel free to stop me when I lose the plot here... You didn't like that a few, belligerent fans of the original works criticize the Robotech adaptation on a site which also caters (albeit minimally) to fans of the originals, so you left there and came to a site devoted exclusively to the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series and its sequels, which you say you don't even like very much, to defend Robotech from perfectly legitimate observations, criticism, and legal discussion? Forgive me, but your logic seems to be horribly screwed up. I can't imagine why you telling the marketing director how to do his job didn't go over well... Still, that's par for the course as far as Harmony Gold is concerned. Their three great business strategies are to answer questions with an deliberately vague statement that only superficially appears to answer the question, to deny that criticism is legitimate or widespread in any way, and to shift the blame elsewhere when they can't simply write it off as the muttering of a few malcontents. Yes there is. The reasons why not can be found here, and in copyright law: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=29850 For what it's worth... welcome to MacrossWorld.

I think I threw up a little bit reading that... Wasn't that Carl Macek's alleged grand plan? To try and make some kind of point by having Minmay/Minmei be incredibly obnoxious, selfish, and stupid? Well, there is the outside chance that someone WILL finally provide something that adds to the body of information we have on the limitations of Harmony Gold's claim on Macross outside Japan. Of course, as we discovered recently, to our scorn, many of those claiming to have such information were blowing smoke.