Seto Kaiba

To the best of my knowledge, said holographic singer has never been identified. I gotta say, if it IS Minmay, she's looking pretty good for a woman about to celebrate her 100th birthday.

Somehow, I can't see the few remaining moderators or the admins looking for a reason to ban me just to make their balls feel big. They're not quite that petty... yet. I suspect a lot of it is just that I don't tolerate idiots, I expose BSers for what they are, and I tell moderators off for bad judgements. Now it wouldn't surprise me at all if I were being targeted for a ban because I'm poking holes in the pretense that the Robotech franchise is healthy, active, and popular. Yeah, there's really not a lot of point to being a moderator there. Traffic in the forums is so light that it's not even really worth it, and the officer's forum is a complete waste of time. Most of the "cool" moderators are gone, lost either to total apathy about Robotech's future, or a simple case of "couldn't be arsed". We're left with three, maybe four mods, only one of which I can honestly say I like and respect. It was even worse back when I first joined, where for every good moderator there was a mod living out some kind of juvenile power fantasy. That's the Harmony Gold way... arbitrarily screwing over the fanbase. The Robotech.com forums are pretty much dead these days... there's somewhere around 25 regular contributors who mostly sit around and rehash the same tired arguments over and over again, broken up by the occasional newbie asking a simple question or a totally absurd hypothetical.

Actually, it makes a decent amount of sense... it's an electromagnetic railgun, which works by passing an extremely large electrical current through the projectile, which interacts with the magnetic fields generated by the rails to accelerate the projectile. Gold is an excellent electrical conductor, so gold mixed with something more magnetically responsive would be an excellent material for railgun ammunition. Expensive as hell, but very effective.

Yeah, but the YF-21's a unique case... none of the limbs contain essential systems. They exist solely for the sake of the GERWALK and battroid modes. As far as transformation impeded by damage, loss of limbs doesn't seem to be a huge issue, as Hikaru is able to get his VF-1S to transform after losing both arms in the TV series. The loss of limbs is apparently a lot less of a threat to transformation than than damage to the joints that carry out the transformation, as with that VF-2SS.

Actually, yes. In Episode 5 of the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA ("Station Break"), a VF-2SS is hit by a beam cannon shot as it starts to transform, and the damage causes it to get stuck halfway between fighter and battroid modes, until a power armor tears it apart. I would imagine so, but I don't think that much has ever been depicted.

I wouldn't doubt it, but then again it wouldn't really be much of a change from the status quo where I'm concerned. For a while now, I've had reason to suspect that at least one moderator has targeted me for a permanent ban. I haven't exactly endeared myself to the moderators with my zero-tolerance policy for bullshitters and spammers, my refusal to tolerate stupid people, and my tendency to argue with moderators when I disagree with their judgements. By some extraordinary means, I seem to keep dodging the bullet. Steve Yun, Tommy Tune, Kevin McKeever, and Tom Bateman seem to have all developed some serious apathy for the message boards, and the few remaining moderators don't seem to care much what I do so long as I don't cuss. As the boards have really quieted down, I think part of it might be that when I'm not acting like some foul-mouthed ninja for hire, I'm one of the site's most respected and knowledgeable contributors. (Of course, that doesn't mean a lot over there, since there're probably only about 50 active members there) Perversely, Tommy even seemed glad to have my feedback on the retcons he made in the RPG. Well... I'd imagine they probably keep a closer eye on the moderator staff's behavior offsite than they do the general membership. All the mods seem to present a united front that the new movie(s) are great stuff, which leads me to believe they're expected to parrot the company line or risk losing their posts.

Honestly, I'm not seeing the resemblance. Now THERE you might have something... No, the mystery ship from the Macross Galaxy fleet is NOT a VF-2SS. It has some minor design commonalities with the VF-2SS, but all in all looks more like that one fighter from the first episode of Yukikaze. The people who think that's it's a sign that Macross II is going to be recanonized are daydreaming...

I'm pretty sure that a chant was INCORPORATED into the story of the novels, actually... didn't the children of the REF crew start chanting "protoculture" and have creepy psychic powers? Um... Memo... I think you might be misunderstanding something... "Codices" is the plural form, and I'm pretty sure that's the english pluralization at that. It's been a while since I last cracked my Latin book, but I'm fairly sure the proper Latin plural is "Codicis". Anyway, unless you intend your project to be a collection of books published together, rather than a single book/magazine, you'd want to use "Codex", not "Codices". (If you want to get REALLY anal about proper classical Latin, the singular form is "caudex" and the plural "caudicis")

How the hell does THAT work? Lately, I've come to suspect that Harmony Gold is modeling their corporate operations on 3D Realms, and spend the time they ought to be using to develop new products thinking up excuses for why they don't have any new products to show the fans. Of late, their favorite response is "Oh yes, we're working on stuff, you can tell we are because we don't have anything to show for it!" DON'T GIVE THEM IDEAS!

That's pretty much what I was aiming for... the majority of the Robotech fans on the Robotech.com message boards are reasonably civil and polite, even if their grasp on reality is a little bit shaky since they don't want to admit that they bet on the wrong horse. There's this genuinely cult-like cluster of fans on there who come charging into threads to defend the retcons Tommy made over the last couple years, telling critics that they're not real Robotech fans, and happily say "thank you sir, may I have another" every time Tommy and company shat out another mediocre comic or third-rate movie... the sort of mad Robotech fan whose love of the series borders on the fetishistic, who vehemently disavow its links to Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada, and who defended the obscene price for the Masterpiece Beta as reasonable... in short, people like Treiz and Jeebers. (To give you an idea of HOW crazy these nutters are, I've been told by some of them that Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada are ripoffs of Robotech, and not the other way around) Doesn't surprise me... the average age of fans on Robotech.com is over 18... yet they insist on keeping the site kid friendly enough for preschoolers.

Doesn't surprise me in the least. Back in 2003, when I first registered on Robotech.com, I noticed that Harmony Gold seemed to have a crippling fear of being criticized, particularly where their new projects are concerned. People who predict that new products will turn out badly tend to find themselves the objects of an unnatural amount of attention from the moderators. What's more, when disputes break out between the glassy-eyed Robotech fan-zombies for whom Tommy is something of a messiah and the people with working brains, the moderators always seem to decide that the critics are trying to stir up trouble. Right now, I'm pretty sure I'm under the close scrutiny two, possibly three, moderators for my criticisms of the coming live-action movie and my arguments with a dyed-in-the-wool fanatic by the screenname of Jeebers. I've always wondered why they're using the plural form "Codices" instead of the singular form "Codex" for the title of the work in progress. Any light to shed on that? If all the Robotech Codex project is is a condensation of half-assed Robotech books like the Robotech Art series and the Palladium RPG, what's the effing point? You can put a pretty bow on a turd, but that's not going to disguise the fact that it's a turd, nor will it distract anyone from the stench. Not only will they have to jump through hoops to get Harmony Gold's OK to print, they'll have to jump through more hoops to get Palladium's OK to use art or content from their books too, and heaven help them if they want to use stuff from the McKinney novels. All in all, an awful lot of trouble for not a lot of useful content. What good is a publication like that if the mechanical design stats they print go out the window in the next Infopedia update? No kidding... I remember seeing a couple signatures on Robotech.com that went to the effect of "Former Robotech fan, lost to Macross due to no movement from HG". Pretty fair description of where I was, circa 2003. Though Robotech continues to lose ground in my book, because Tommy is wiping his dick all over the franchise and turning it from a polarizing, if anachronistic, classic, into bland, samey dribble. I know... I've made that observation several times... message board activity on their site has dropped off sharply, so that there are barely thirty people posting in 90% of the site. Most of the old times have been banned or left when the site suddenly turned from something like this place into a kid-friendly poster child for political correctness. Harmony Gold employees (particularly Kevin McKeever) protest that their franchise is growing, bigger and better than ever before, and that the fanbase has only grown, offering no actual evidence to support his claims in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Ask the joe average anime fan what he thinks of Robotech and you'll get one of two answers most of the time... either "What's that?" or "That's poo!".

Okay... that's enough to completely reverse my opinion of him... anyone capable of being pals with Doug Bendo is someone I'd prefer to regard only while on the opposite side of an unbreakable two-way mirror.

Hmmm... that's actually a really cool concept. Nicely done.

Amusing... I was aware of the existence of at least one printed preview copy that'd been sent to Harmony Gold for approvals. It doesn't surprise me that the guy who did the cover art was also given a preview copy. I will admit, the cover art looks quite nice. Better than much of the crap Harmony Gold puts out professionally. If I can find that guy's robotech.com SN or if he's got a MacrossWorld account, I've half a mind to offer him new blog real-estate on my server... EDIT: Never mind... I found him. It looks like he was permanently banned from Robotech.com for doing what I so often do... telling the people in charge just how shitty the quality of their work really is.

Yeah, according to the Robotech Anthology website, they were planning to publish it on a semi-annual basis. I'd guess that Harmony Gold gave them the go-ahead for the publication to avoid offending the long-time fans who coordinated it, several of whom are Robotech.com moderators, but refused to fund it because they don't think it really stands a chance, a passive-aggressive way to kill the project permanently. An honest assessment if ever I saw one, since most anime enthusiasts have either never heard of Robotech before, or regard the series as unworthy of attention because it's a bastardized rewrite. I have to admit, the lengths to which some of the more devoted Robotech fans go to delude themselves into believing their favorite show is still popular are somewhat frightening. One fellow tried to convince me that Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was selling like mad because it was briefly the top-selling anime DVD at WalMart. Now I don't know how many of you have ever ventured into the video section of a WalMart before... but calling their selection of anime "sparse" would be too generous to be accurate. Last time I ventured back there, Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was one of only five titles they had... three of the remaining four were various flavors of Dragonball, and the fourth was Pokemon. Being the best-selling anime DVD at WalMart... a title every bit as prestigious as being the best-selling anime DVD at your local McDonalds. That same fellow attempted to convince me that Robotech: Battlecry was wildly popular because it had sold somewhere around 50,000 copies... fell flat on its face when I pointed out that a genuinely popular game like Mario Kart or Bioshock could expect to sell half a million or more copies, and that a truly popular cross-platform game could expect to sell millions. Admittedly, I can understand why Harmony Gold would brag about Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles being a financial success... after all, they only spent $1 million making it, and at $20 a copy they only have to sell 50,000 copies to break even... not exactly difficult considering it's available worldwide, and made even less difficult when you factor in the money they got from its brief theatrical run and TV run.

Personally, since my favorite part of the Macross universe has remained unchanged by even the slightest retcon or rewrite over the last fifteen years, it'd take an awful lot to chase me away from the franchise for good... Something atrocious like trying to shoehorn Macross II back into the main timeline, or remaking it with Kawamori mecha. Or, god forbid, another exercise in pants-on-head retarded storytelling like Macross 7... I still haven't been able to ascertain which is worse... Gundam ZZ or Macross 7... but neither one completely succeeded in chasing me away from its respective franchise... it just made me all the more eager to get past them to something that might actually be good again. I can't comprehend what motivates the Bizarro people who actually found those two shows entertaining.

That approach is nothing new, Einherjar. After all, it's exactly how they made the Robotech.com Infopedia... right down to the poaching of information from Macross sources. A lot of the guys who wrote the Unofficial Robotech Reference Guide "consulted on" (wrote) the Infopedia based on their work on their own site. Not I... the only Palladium Books game I've ever played was their Macross II RPG... with all its horrible inaccuracies and blatantly made-up information. It's what motivated me to start collecting every Macross II source I could lay hands on and put together a site providing the most accurate information on the OVA possible. I've seen the Robotech RPG books, both 1st and 2nd Edition, and they are pretty bad. Lots of art shamelessly thieved from Macross books (but with Robotech, that seems to be the status quo) and lots of REALLY REALLY AWFUL art drawn by their in-house artists.

And yet no Ishtar or Wendy Rider... FOR SHAME!

Macross Frontier OST 1 (Nyan Fro) and OST 2 (Nyan Tra) are both slightly less than half background music, though it's really nothing remarkable or even remotely interesting. OST 3 (Nyan Tama) has no BGM at all.

Robotech's version of the female alter ego of Yellow Belmont from Mospeada. Actually a much better vocalist than Reba West/Rebecca Forstadt (Robotech's Minmei), but still pretty awful due to bad writing and recycled Minmei songs.

Hmmmm... Ishtar or Sheryl Nome. Fancy lightshows I can do without, I want some decent songs.

I know... it's really kind of worrying that their business plan seems to be an arbitrary desire to make everyone hate them and screw over their customer base. It's like the company's being run by a Batman villain.

Well... wow... that's... kinda shitty. Most fans don't have that kind of scratch kicking around, and the few that do have better things to spend it on. I know Harmony Gold makes a practice of screwing Robotech fans over... but that's above and beyond the call of duty.

Sorry... I'm a perfectionist... and that was a grammatical nightmare. Yes, Robotech.com fan-fiction and fan-art submissions require the submitting party to agree to a legal agreement that gives Harmony Gold the royalty-free right to exploit submitted fan-art and fan-fiction however they see fit. The exact text of the agreement is: (I trimmed out the first bit about having to submit only original works)

I'm fairly sure that so long as the artists/writers waive their usual rights to control the use/misuse of their work like they have to do on Robotech.com there shouldn't be a problem. I could, of course, be wrong. I had a look at that Robotech Anthology website, and it looks like Harmony Gold hasn't given them the go-ahead yet anyway... it says they submitted a demo version of the first issue/volume and haven't heard back yet. I'd imagine if they decide to go ahead and add mecha and character stats to all that, it'll have to go through approvals again. EDIT: Torturous wording was torturous.