Seto Kaiba

"Brera's wardrobe provided by The Village People."

Total non sequitur here for a moment... I got drawn into a discussion about the current state of the Robotech franchise and how it's remembered on Robotech.com. The OP quickly turned out to be one of those dyed-in-the-wool fanatics who thinks that Robotech is a flawless classic beyond the criticism of mortal men that must be regarded as a megahit. He took it very poorly when I explained to him that 9/10ths of the world doesn't know what the hell Robotech is, and that the remaining tenth is split into fans, people who hate the show, and people straddling the fence between the other two groups and started attacking me for it. The dolt was basically labeling anyone who disagreed with his deluded belief that Robotech is a pillar of the American sci-fi genre as a troll and trying to hound them off the site. When a bunch of people reported him... it was ME who got threatened with a ban by the moderators (specifically, Maverick_LSC, a particularly loathsome little toady who interprets any criticism of Robotech, no matter how well-intentioned, as flame-bait). Then, of course, McKeever comes along, while professing to actually listen to fan opinions, quotes my criticism, and says "this is why I don't listen to Robotech critics". And these people wonder why the Robotech franchise is circling the drain? It's run by people who only listen to positive feedback, and do their best to quash criticism of any kind. I wrote to Steve Yun about Maverick_LSC's behavior... I expect a VERY interesting and informative response... if he does what I think he'll do, I'll be posting a copy of his e-mail telling me that fans aren't allowed to criticize Robotech under any circumstances...

Hey, if you take the tribute shows and convention tour away from him, he won't have anything to do at all. Since Harmony Gold isn't calling the shots on the live-action movie, he doesn't have anything to do on that front, and it's highly doubtful that they're actually doing anything about Shadow Rising. Maybe he's cooking up another plot-critical limited-edition comic book to tie Shadow Chronicles and Shadow Rising together, so they can keep the same level of storytelling quality... y'know, overlong intro cutscenes that explain nothing and go nowhere. No doubt the fans will try to make something major of it.

Somehow, that seems neither wise nor efficient... is there actually precedent for that thing having Zentradi pilots? That just doesn't sound right to me for some reason... Yeah, I did a bit of a double-take when my copy first arrived, and then Mr. March, Talos, and let loose a collective "WTF!" while discussing Chronicle in a group chat. Still, Chronicle makes mistakes and omissions every now and again, like their sudden change in labeling of the VF-22's gunpod, and their misidentifying the armaments of the VF-2SS. So a typo here and there does not surprise me much anymore. They're rushing to meet a very tight production schedule, so one can hardly blame them for a few mistakes. I'm actually amazed there haven't been MORE problems.

Honestly, Harmony Gold's creative and marketing staff has perfected the art of talking a lot without actually saying anything. I understand they also devote something like half the panel time to Q&A and other associated malarkey. "Be patient" seems to be the default response of the die-hards these days. They're so utterly convinced that Robotech will finally deliver on the promise it supposedly had back in the 80's and will wow the world when the live-action movie comes out... we just (supposedly) have to give them enough time to make the live-action movie a flawless masterpiece... so our great great great great grandchildren will probably be watching it while they tool around the galaxy at Warp 6. We shouldn't take this as a sign that the LAM is a go... it's out of Harmony Gold's hands at this point. They sold the rights to Maguire Entertainment and Maguire partnered with Warner Bros. Whether or not the movie makes it into production is not going to be Harmony Gold's call. As it still HASN'T entered production, it would appear that it will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. If it falls apart, and I believe it probably will, Tommy and Kevin will only retreat to their fortresses of crapulence once Warner and Maguire tell them it's been axed... odds are they won't bother telling Harmony Gold for a while anyway. One has to wonder how they think they're going to succeed with this live-action movie when the trend they're depending on is dying fast, and they're still dicking around in the earliest phases of pre-production. It looks to me like when the bubble bursts, we're looking at another twenty-year silence from Harmony Gold. Maybe a few more Macross shows can slip through once they're back to having nobody "minding the store". Well, yes, but that much was essentially a given. They couldn't pass up the opportunity to sell another Beta repaint to the masses at $200 a pop. I wonder if it'll sell bugger-all like the Jack Archer YF-1R did. So they're ditching Vicious Cycle Software as a developer? Maybe they've hired the cheesy French pricks at Ubisoft to handle it this time. If Robotech: Invasion was anything to go by, they don't have a goddamn clue what the fans want. I can't believe they think there's actually enough content in RTSC to make a game. Why, WHY am I thinking that this'll be a Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena-style repackage of Invasion billed as a new game because of the addition of an expansion pack that was too short and too poo to be a stand-alone title was tacked on to the end?

Well, they DO have the outside-Japan merchandising rights to DYRL. Nah, they're just stealing ideas from other toy manufacturers now... I'm kind of amused that this black and gold repaint is a Strike Valkyrie from DYRL, rather than something from Robotech. It isn't the Stealth Valkyrie from Battlecry though... that was just Hikaru's color scheme with the white replaced by black

I can't remember if they actually CONFIRM that. I remember Luca saying something to Leon about suspecting that Bilrer wanted to use the advantageous properties of fold quartz-based fold drives to monopolize interstellar commerce. I know his involvement in that whole cybernetic conspiracy was supposedly to find Minmay and the Megaroad-01. Well, it's Macross: Flashback 2012's related publications that say that Hikaru was assigned to the SDF-2 Megaroad-01, which was captained by his wife Misa. It's the Megaroad-01 that got missing (with the entire original love triangle aboard).

There really hasn't been a lot of motion from Harmony Gold this year. The only major development in Robotech since Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles failed to set the world on fire was their December 2008 announcement that Robotech's original series would be sold on iTunes on a per-episode basis. There's been precious little from the Robotech front this year, with the only noteworthy things being the hype about the live-action movie (which even die-hard fans are starting to get sick of) and a few more shoddily-built additions to the Masterpiece Collection... namely, more color-matching Betas and another Cyclone. Can they sustain business without the gullible fans who've buy every repainted toy and re-released DVD box set? Probably not. Of course, they do have the backing of the main corporate office, which does something with real-estate. If the fans do finally get tired of it all and stop buying, the main office'll probably shut the Robotech franchise down and go do something else.

Oh yes, they profit from that practice. The way they made Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles and trumpeted it as a huge success ought to be a clear indication of exactly HOW they do it too. They put very little money into the development and production of new products, then price them as though they were made by a much more competent company. That way, even if sales are mediocre (and they often are) the initial investment will still be covered, and the rest is all profit. Exactly what they're doing with it is anybody's guess... since they don't seem to be investing it in more or better products (given the recent decline in the quality of the Masterpiece Collection and the phenomenally low budget of the RTSC movie). They probably spend a lot of it keeping their staff paid, and the rest on constantly renewing their trademarks.

And in one sentence, you have completely redefined my vision of hell. Well, Harmony Gold may not have the creativity to redesign the VFs, but then again the final say on mechanical design belongs to Maguire Entertainment and Warner Bros, who DO know how to do that. I get the feeling what we'll be seeing are transforming F-22s and F-35s, just like Bayformers did. Yeah, they're much better than what HG/WB/ME could do, but they're still Macross IP, and thankfully off-limits to all three parties of idiots. As much as I'd love to see a high-quality CG VF-2SS Valkyrie II, the last place I'd want to see it is a Robotech movie.

and that, my friends, is the secret to Harmony Gold's "success". Harmony Gold gives the illusion that Robotech is popular by producing merchandise in very limited quantities, and then bragging about it when it sells out. The cornerstone of their toy sales, the Masterpiece Collection, are all limited to production runs of 10,000 units. Considering that the Robotech fanbase, while small, is still an international one, the limited 10,000 unit run isn't going to go very far, especially not with fans buying 2 or 3 at a time, and comic shops buying them in even larger numbers. The comics books are on the same model... extremely limited print runs that are totally inadequate to satisfy the small, but devoted fanbase.

Nah, Macross II was an official production done by Big West, it's just that Studio Nue wasn't involved with the project (though some other Macross creators were, like Haruhiko Mikimoto), the studios who did the animation were AIC and ONRIO. Kawamori's never really said he wants nothing to do with Macross II, just that it's an alternate universe story because it doesn't line up with his vision for the ongoing story (which was, at the time, Macross Plus). It was made back when he was still loudly professing that he didn't want to do another Macross show. Because Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles had an extremely limited print run, and sold out fairly quickly, so right around the time Robotech fans thought that this was the start of a new, major story arc, they were fighting to snap up copies of the magazine, which supposedly contained key details about the plot. After scans were leaked to the net, most people realized that the magazine was just a rehash of several old Sentinels books with some redesigned ships and characters, and that was the end of their interest in it.

Speaking of running into Macross in the weirdest places... On a whim, I was watching Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka just a few minutes ago when the sudden appearance of Macross Frontier's Captain Wilder caught me by surprise. Attached is the screen capture from episode 8 of the show (about 4:17 in).

I know what it is now... it's the pirate ship from Macross Dynamite 7.

I know the plot of the movie... it came to me in a flash, and now the hiring of Tom Rob Smith makes sense. The movie's going to be a murder mystery! It'll star Tobey Maguire as a Detective Rick Hunter, a rookie trying to figure out who murdered Minmei after the Earth forces and the Zentradi got sick of her stupidity, and the fact that listening to her singing is the auditory equivalent of unanesthetized dental surgery. It'll be a tough case, with lots of twists and turns (from over 50,000 suspects, all with motive!), and at the movie's climax, Rick finds out that HE is the murderer, and turns himself in, only to be given an official pardon, a medal, and a three-rank promotion by a grateful Captain Gloval.

Considering the age of consent is lower over there, I think that was probably more to facilitate the changed backstory, where Hikaru was already a soldier and Minmay already famous when the two met, rather than a way to dodge accusations of them being too young. Yep, that's what Minmei looks like in the Sentinels comics. Ugly, isn't it? Unfortunately, she's not alone in having been turned from a slender woman into some buxom bodybuilder... pretty much all the women in the Sentinels comics looked like that.

Eh, I'd say Robotech fans live in a sealed-off bubble away from the rest of humanity... Robotech RPG players doubly so.

My eyes! THEY BURN! Honestly, it's hard to say exactly what the Robotech fanbase thinks of characters of mixed ancestry. The problem is that, aside from the Sterlings, there really aren't any mixed-species couples who have produced children. The Zentradi are nearly wiped out, the survivors pack up and leave with the Expeditionary Forces and suffer heavy losses, leaving the species all but extinct by 2044. The Tirolans who attacked Earth are apparently wiped out at the end of the war, so they never mate with humans, and all but two of the human-form Invid are dead by the end of their war with humanity, and they haven't been around long enough to mate with anyone. Unless Scott and Ariel or Lancer and Sera pop out a kid in the near future, the only mixed-ancestry characters around are Dana Sterling, who is almost universally loathed, and Maia Sterling, who is too new and unestablished for the fans to give a hoot about. For now, it doesn't look like the Robotech fanbase gives a toss about mixed-ancestry characters. The show and expanded universe material have always been kind of anthropocentric, pitting the all-human forces against the evil, cardboard cutout alien villains. The subject of "good aliens" in Robotech is a particularly odious one, because there's no way to approach it without bringing up the monumental stupidity that is Robotech II: the Sentinels. Really, there are no "good" aliens in the original Robotech series. There are always one or two "good" characters among the evil alien hordes, but other than them, the aliens are essentially all malevolent, and bent on humanity's destruction. Robotech II: the Sentinels tried to introduce the subject of friendly alien races by having the Expeditionary Forces of the Pioneer Mission liberating worlds that had been invaded and occupied by the Invid Regent's forces. Unfortunately, the friendly aliens who appear in Robotech II: the Sentinels are a pack of sci-fi cliches... anthropomorphic animals, sentient robots, coneheads, rock people, and space amazons. Even hardcore Robotech fans have a hard time taking the Sentinels aliens seriously, and the general consensus is that the whole lot of them were a stupid idea to begin with. Robotech fans don't do friendly aliens... it's always humanity versus the alien menace.

Okay, so I'm not the only one who did a double-take and then couldn't figure that one out. My first thought was the SB-10 Starwing, but that clearly doesn't have 8 wings... could this possibly be the first of the ETC sheets, featuring one of those wacky terrorist mecha from the Macross Digital Mission VF-X games? Like the Annabella Lasiodora mobile weapon? For one wild moment, I thought this might include a reprint of the VF History article from Macross II...

Considering the entire movie revolves around the only unresolved plot point that the majority of the fans still give a damn about... the whereabouts of a Macross character Harmony Gold can't legally use... is it any surprise they had to load the movie down with useless references to previous Robotech sagas to present viewers with the illusion of continuity with the rest of Robotech? If they hadn't, the only way you'd be able to tell it was a Robotech sequel and not just a generic-looking direct-to-DVD sci-fi movie with dodgy animation, substandard writing, lackluster editing, shoddy voice acting, piss-poor music, and boring, dated mecha designs would be the title on the box. I guess Bright Noa got bored after the One Year War and started teaching at the U.N. Spacy's Officer Candidate School. Maybe they're hoping that, if nothing else, having a reasonably attractive woman on the cast will keep the fans coming to conventions. Or maybe they're hoping for a Zentradi style lolicon attraction with Miley?

Did Roven actually bail from the project? Harmony Gold's official position is that he was reassigned.

Odds are I'd probably end up buying at least four. Five or six if they release the color-stripe decals to do each character's version. That's all the time it gets... that's the VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie, 's the VF-2SS's predecessor. But for that one scene, it exists only in lineart and history snippets. It's a neat design, but there's virtually no information about it. Both are Earth-designed, but the VF-2SS has a lot of Zentradi hardware under the hood. Nitpick patrol... five auto-attacker bits, not three. That was pretty much my take on it... a lot of the hate for the VF-2SS that's getting voiced here is either based on the 1:100 transforming model kit (which is not a fair representation of the mecha), or without any perspective on the worse "big gun" offenders in recent shows.

Somehow, when I ponder this, all that comes to mind is Maguire Entertainment filing a lawsuit against Harmony Gold for fraudulent misrepresentation of the Robotech live-action movie license. I can't help but think that Harmony Gold might've... exaggerated... Robotech's popularity and the live-action movie's prospects a bit, in much the same way that Robotech.com moderators and staffers like Maverick_LSC and Kevin McKeever do on the message boards. Then again, Cerberus Capital Management let the Daimler group off the hook after they supposedly misrepresented the state of Chrysler, so who knows? If it's one of those things where you have to prove deception and/or malice, it'll be in court forever, since Harmony Gold's employees and volunteer staffers have started believing their own lies. Isn't it really a matter of them having nothing at all to show and/or license out to interested parties? With the live-action Robotech movie still very much a "what if" rather than a certainty, and Robotech: Shadow Rising mired in pre-production, I can't quite see them having anything new to peddle. I suspect that they probably signed over the merchandising rights to the live-action movie to Maguire Entertainment in exchange for royalties, and this early in the game, there isn't even a script, let alone mechanical or character designs to peddle to the toymakers. They're not known to be working on any new comics, novels, etc. and it's unlikely that they'll part with their usual toy manufacturers for the Shadow Rising toys, if any are ever produced.

Y'know... people wonder why I prefer Macross the way it was before Kawamori got involved with the franchise again. The next time somebody asks me why, I can just point to this thread and say "that's why".

No kidding... even just within Macross II there's still plenty of good stuff coming... Macross Chronicle's actually publishing new information about the characters and mecha, we've got the promise of at least one VF-100 series toy, and more...