Seto Kaiba

Eh... IMO Mylene's character sheets could probably have been condensed a fair bit to leave room for greater coverage of other character, mecha, etc. that're getting less coverage than they should (or are not being covered at all). Bah, I was hating Ranka before it was a group activity. Oh, I'm well aware of the extra information about the chain we got in the Macross 7 Docking Festival booklet... I'm just saying there's really not THAT much to it as a setting. Its history can be summed up pretty concisely, as can its role in the series. Chronicle's never really bothers going into exhaustive detail, they just give a reasonably concise summary most of the time. (For example, I could rhapsodize for several pages about the development history of the VF-2SS... they boiled it down to a single paragraph)

Not entirely true... there is the case of Misty Klaus, one of the principal characters in Macross: Eternal Love Song, a canon game in the parallel world continuity. In her very first outing in a VF (one she stole, mind), with no prior training or experience operating a VF, managed to not only defend the carrier Prometheus II from a sustained Zentradi attack nearly singlehandedly, sent them packing before the carrier's own fighter squadrons had a chance to make it back. She didn't exactly become an invincible savant pilot. Insofar as the difficulty of training and how helpful prior experience operating an aircraft is/was, we have to remember that for every Hikaru Ichijo or Shin Kudo, there's a Misty Klaus or a Milia Jenius... someone who, despite having almost certainly never set foot in the cockpit of a plane before, picks up the basics of a VF's operation in an extremely short span of time and is able to operate one in combat not long after and not embarrass themselves too badly. (Other such likely individuals include Maximilian Jenius, Hayao Kakizaki, Sheryl Nome, poss. Mylene Jenius) As I illustrated above, not entirely true... Allegations of animator laziness aside, the Cheyenne II is a technologically updated version of the ADR-03-Mk.III Cheyenne from before Space War 1. Rather than have something that looked like a technological step forward from the Space War 1 destroids, we got the giant robot equivalent of someone renovating an old M4 Sherman with modern tech and expecting it to perform just as well as an M1 Abrams. It just doesn't make much sense from a design standpoint... like the military going back to an old P-51 and saying "this was good poo, let's strap a jet engine and some laser-guided munitions on this puppy and put it back into service!".

Hopefully this is the Macross II sheet for the Gloria and the U.N. Spacy's standard battleship... if it is, odds are they'll cram the rescue ship into an extra report or the bottom three inches of the back side since there's so little info on it. Apart from the fact that I totally read that third line as "Moby Dick" initially, nothing exactly super-interesting. Gotta wonder why the N-Ger is the cover mecha tho if it's a Kamjin issue tho... and do we really need another Mylene sheet? That girl's already got what, A thru G? *yawn* Call back when it's the death of the One-Dimension(al) Cinderella... *hates Ranka* Okay Chronicle... apology accepted... I figured that's what the thumbnailed sheet I saw on the blog was... no surprises there. Hopefully it'll be one and done, since there's not much on the restaurant at all. 'kay... so the VF-1's ejection seat, the removable cockpit module, the VF-11's ejectable cockpit block, and EX-Gear again? If ever there was a song sheet that deserved to end up at the bottom of a birdcage this is it...

Odds are that whatever role Carl Macek has now that he's supposedly back on board is going to me somewhere between minimal and token. It's no secret Tommy's a bit of an egomaniac and a real control freak, so I don't think he'll sit idly by and let Carl assume any measure of creative control. Smart money says it's just a token "consulting" position like he had for Shadow Chronicles, but hyped up to make it sound like he's going to be more involved in hopes that this'll make the vocal critics of RTSC stop verbally crucifying Tommy for his ineptitude. Apart from potential PR value, the only thing Carl could bring to the franchise is a return to the glory days when they had projects failing before they even made it to production instead of getting one weak movie out and stalling indefinitely for more money. It's not like Macek can write... had one of Macek's old projects actually survived to see release, it would've given most of the fans the distinct impression that the franchise had well and truly jumped the shark. Like I said, he was also reaching for something to criticize in Macross Frontier so he could maintain his stated belief that Robotech was the better show. Truly, Carl Macek is a man who missed his calling as a mid-level marketing executive in the finance industry... someone else is always to blame for his failures.

's okay... it's better than my situation. Half the time I'm embarrassed as hell that I actually understand the gibberish they argue in circles about over there. At the very least, we can take some small measure of satisfaction from the fact that for the time being he's asking for clarification when it comes to things he doesn't understand in Macross instead of leaping to ridiculous conclusions without bothering to look for an explanation like he so often did in the past. Exactly how much of the ridiculous stuff he posted was sincere ignorance and how much was just intended to annoy and bait people is a matter that remains to be settled. It seems likely that most of it was probably insincere and intended mainly to annoy the Macross fans who frequented RobotechX into saying something he could get MEMO to ban them for. See above... As one of the people who responded to his initial tirade about the perceived pro-homosexual material in Macross Frontier, the impression I got from his reaction was that he's genuinely and profoundly homophobic. We did try to explain the cultural context of Alto's acting and precedent for similar casting decisions in Western theater, and that it wasn't really that outrageous to have an openly gay character from the Japanese perspective. He didn't buy it, and I think it was partly motivated by homophobia, and partly by a desire to find something, anything to object to in Macross Frontier to preserve his stance at the time that Robotech is superior. Either way, it matters very little. Due to the various international copyright protection treaties the copyrights held by Big West are respected under US law. Any wiggle room that would normally exist would be considerably restricted if not flat out eliminated by the disposition of rights established by the original court rulings.

No kidding... likely a fair few of those (comparatively) small conflicts that were mentioned in Isamu's personnel file and featured in some of the games had an impact on it as well. Exactly how much sway the little-n new U.N. Gov't and the big-n New U.N. Gov't hold over the planet Zola depends on its status. It's been a while since I last saw Macross Dynamite 7, but wasn't Zola a protectorate, rather than a member state, under the little-n new U.N. Government?

As some are saying, we can't discount the possibility that he's putting us on... but we also can't discount the possibility that he really is trying to turn over a new leaf. All we have to do is give him a chance and eventually the truth'll come out on its own. I'd like to hope that this new PTH who can actually perceive the failings of Harmony Gold and acknowledge the merits of Macross without sacrificing his appreciation of Robotech in the bargain isn't just an act he's putting on to get on MEMO's nerves.

As awesome as that would've been for them to use my site as a reference, it wouldn't have done them a damn bit of good for most of the material they've published, which is almost entirely common-sense observations based on the footage and more verbose versions of material already published in Entertainment Bible 51. As an overview, their material's generally fine, and while some of their new material has raised eyebrows, I can't fault most of it (mainly because it's in areas where there was no pre-existing information to contradict). Now if they were surfing for a date and they already knew about Mr. March's site, they would've gotten 2092 anyway (due to the intervention of TheLoneWolf and myself). They ought to have the official size comparison on hand anyway if they're reprinting the line art, so why the Zentradi mecha sizes are wrong is anybody's guess... maybe another copy-paste goof.

Okay... this really was a mindf**k... Okay, have I gone COMPLETELY insane or did PTH just acknowledge that I'm the lesser of two evils? Maybe that's what did him in... the realization that I'm NOT the source of all worldly evils (but I try DAMN hard to be!) collapsed the facade of the perfect Robotech universe and exposed him to the harsh, glaring light of reality. Either way, I'd call the mysteriously polite, rational, inquisitive PTH a marked improvement over the fanatical one we were dealing with back in '09. What has it REALLY gotten them? Well, the steady trickle of Macross merchandise is what kept the franchise afloat in the early years of Robotech.com, and Macross merchandise pretty much dominates their sales. Apart from that, their trademark on the name and attempts to obstruct Macross licensing have just brought about additional bad karma among the consumer base, and made them a laughingstock in many anime circles. We can't really credit their punishing lack of originality to that, because they were almost completely unoriginal the entire time, even Robotech II: the Sentinels is a show patched together from material copied from other, rather more popular, shows including Star Trek and Star Wars.

Azrael's wording is kind of ambiguous... you can't trademark promotional art or design art, that's a copyright matter. The trademark(s) in question cover the name "Macross" itself, the Japanese spelling, the original logo, and the use of same in merchandise. #75750692 covers its the use of the name and/or logo in apparel, #76288366 covers its use on DVD and VHS media, #76385551 covers its use in broadcast/webcast, #76382155 covers the name itself and the TV series logo, and #76480124 covers its use for action figures. Pretty much what I expected then, the Disciples of Leonard are pretty quick to jump down the throats of anyone who criticizes the character, so they draw a lot of hostility. I figured he'd got the boot for arguing with them over in Series & Stories, but it looks like he got away with that and then took it too far elsewhere. One would imagine the DoL would've given up after Tommy went one step further than Carl Macek did in making Leonard totally unlikable by not only making him out to be an incompetent leader, a raving megalomaniac, and a rather violent xenophobe, but also a traitor who was secretly working for the Anti-UN in the early years of the UN Gov't.

Granted, most of it is out of print and some of it is somewhat obscure, but the really important stuff isn't THAT hard to find, and at least some of it should already be in their possession if they're reprinting the mechanical and character design lineart. Cool as it would be for them to consult me on the articles, I can't really see them doing that. XD

Well, like I said, when it came out that we were planning to provide a more permanent, full-featured alternative for the mess RobotechX has become, and rolled a few other proposed/stalled projects into it as well, people started coming out of the woodwork to offer their assistance. Most of the offers of aid come from ordinary fans who are just fed up with the way the "new guard" are running the franchise and how their cronyism has wrecked the community by turning it into a modest but friendly group of ordinary fans into a tiny clique of heretic-hunting fanatics. One of the offers of aid we got was from Michael Bradley's manager, who offered to transfer ownership of one of their unused domain names to us for our use. I'm also still scouting writers for the reference section, and looking for a CMS that'll support what we're trying to do. Finding reasonable writers seems to be something like pissing into the wind, since most of the few remaining folks who could be called experts on one or more of the Robotech sagas with a straight face also tend to be the ones who're backing (or originated) some of the crazy, baseless theories that do the rounds every now and again. It was a gradual decline right up to the point when the site started to attract the attention of the most bitter malcontents from other sites. Once they'd migrated to the site and started in with their "you're not a 'true' fan!" and decreed that the point of a fansite was to share your appreciation of the show, and that criticism of the show and its creators shouldn't be allowed. Once you had that, then things really went right to hell after the legal debates started on Robotech.com, which prompted MEMO to post an almost completely fictitious FAQ about it. When that was challenged, he turned to exiling all discussions of it to a part of the site only registered members could see so nothing would mar the illusion of accuracy in his FAQ in the eyes of the guests, and later just locking all of his "announcements" right away to stop people from telling him he was wrong. At that point, the bottom fell out and things went right to hell. Actually, I disagree... PTH has shown signs that he acknowledges that Carl Macek didn't exactly do a fabulous job with Robotech either, but would rather have a sequel true to the original intent for the ongoing story rather than some weak-ass retcon-fest that looks like it's going to be another false start. The other thing that, to me, indicates he's not likely to go the dougbendo route is that he seems to be not only starting to realize why some his remarks come across as unduly hostile (and even apologizing for it!), but doesn't seem to be afraid to let bygones be bygones and ask for information when he doesn't understand something.

I did tell you how Michael Bradley's manager offered us a few old domain names they weren't using for the project, didn't I? He's already been perma-banned from Robotech.com, though I still can't find exactly where it went down... maybe the thread was deleted? Anyway, at the rate he's going over on RobotechX, it's only a matter of time before MEMO tires of Pizza's constant heckling of his propaganda threads and his much more realistic attitude towards Harmony Gold's rather anticlimactic 25th anniversary plans.

It seems likely that those troubles were factors, but the primary cause cited by Kawamori was that humanity was simply becoming too spread out for the old system of government to govern them effectively. Not really relevant to this thread, you might want to try the Newbie Thread for this one.

Unlikely, IMO. In light of the fact that it was an informal panel, it seems far more likely that Tommy simply failed to check the facts with senior management and the lawyers. Had something major actually changed in the relationship between the creators of Macross and Harmony Gold, it's HIGHLY unlikely that Harmony Gold would've kept it quiet. That would've been front-page news on their website the day it happened, since it'd be the biggest coup in Robotech's twenty-five years of mediocrity and failure. No, smart money says this is a slip of the forked tongue by Tommy Yune... one the company lawyers are no doubt already scolding him for. The answers to your questions are: Q: Why would he go all the way to San Francisco for the first stop of the Robotech Convention Tour? A: Foolish optimism, wishful thinking, and blind faith stemming from his complete and total inability to spot a pattern in Harmony Gold's behavior over the past twenty-five years and a general unwillingness to admit that the franchise he's given so much to over the years will never give anything back. Q: Was he really hoping that anything would come out of this because of the 25th anniversary? A: Yes. Odds are MEMO will spin this however he can so that Harmony Gold comes out smelling of roses and he can continue to believe that Robotech will one day wow us all with its awesomeness instead of continuing to quietly decay in a dingy corner of the internet most people pretend doesn't exist. MEMO doesn't see it as a waste, for him the convention tour will always be proof that Robotech hasn't curled up, shat itself, and died. Don't tell me you're surprised by that... it was inevitable. Somehow, I seem to have become wrapped up in it to such an extent that I'm still working on a replacement for the fansite MEMO ruined with his almost Soviet attitude towards dissent, and have apparently drawn down the attention of more than one Robotech voice actor in the offing, though JT is at least partially to blame for that. EDIT: O.M.F.G.. Pizza is taking MEMO to task over AOD and Harmony Gold's failure to deliver there too. Gentlemen, I think we may have to consider that the proverbial honeymoon is over and the subject has contracted a terminal case of logical thinking where Robotech and Harmony Gold are concerned. He may very well be outgrowing the antics we so often criticized him for. I must confess... I am genuinely surprised.

No kidding... that, plus Kawamori changing the reason we got the "New U.N.", really makes figuring the whole thing out a fair bit messier. Given the available information, my take on the situation is that the little-n "new U.N. Government" likely was established as a continuation of the system of government they'd had before the war, and thus was only "new" in the sense that it was re-founded with new representatives after the war. After a while, the distinction would simply no longer seem important, and was probably dropped altogether, leaving the government as the U.N. Gov't, and the military as the U.N. Forces. According to Kawamori, the big-n "New U.N. Government" came along when the government was forced to reorganize after the constituency of the old government became too spread out for the little-n "new U.N. Government" to govern effectively. From the description, the big-n "New U.N. Government" is a new governmental system established to cope with the realities of galactic colonization on a large scale. The U.N. Spacy presumably became the New U.N. Spacy during this reorganization to bring it under closer civilian oversight, perhaps because of the events of Macross VF-X2. In a nutshell, the important distinction between "new" and "New" seems to be whether the actual system of government changed significantly enough to consider it a whole new government. The "New U.N. Spacy" seems to have only cropped up after the governmental changes passed the point where it really couldn't be called the same system anymore. I could, of course, be completely wrong in my assessment, but it seems to support the available facts and what Kawamori is saying in the Otona Anime interview.

Kind of a non-issue, they didn't have any problems churning out a passable but weak imitation of the old Robotech Art series (The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles) via Stone Bridge Press.

Wow, you actually managed to make something MEMO wrote make sense... It's not like it's not happening in ones and twos now... they're just afraid it'll turn into a stampede to get away from the franchise once the smell of bullshit can no longer cover the smell of death.

Assuming, of course, that MEMO's video isn't conveniently damaged in several places where Tommy appears to be saying things that don't line up with what MEMO wants to believe like the last one he posted was.

Unsurprisingly, this new stance that Carl Macek made the creative decisions he did to combine Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada into Robotech while watching the show with neither sound nor a translated script is at odds with Carl Macek's original account in Robotech Art 1 where he says he picked the latter two shows just on the grounds that they were convenient, and that he reviewed all three stories to see how best to combine them. The editors responsible for Robotech seem to have a love of revisionist history that borders on the fetishistic. They keep trying to make themselves look better by pretending the humble, honest accounts of the show's history from twenty years ago don't exist and are banking on the relative scarcity of those publications and the current fanbase's ignorance of them to mask what would otherwise be laughable, completely transparent lies. It really should be setting off some warning lights that even Robotech fans as devoted as Pizza the Hutt, who until very recently went to bat for them even when there was no hope of victory, are turning on them.

What, having the idol in Macross Plus be a computer-generated simulation wasn't androgynous enough for you? Honestly, no... I like my Macross idols performing music that doesn't suck, and that's something you just don't get from "artists" like Lady Gaga.

Actually, yes... they probably do think that. I think the specific fear is that if they come clean about their (in)ability to use Macross characters and mecha in future cinematic works they'll lose much of the remaining fanbase. Let's face facts, while Harmony Gold may be an incompetently-run outfit, their employees aren't completely stupid. They can read a trend line in television ratings and merchandise sales as easily as you or I, so they're well aware that over half of their fanbase consistently names the Macross Saga as their favorite part of Robotech, and that interest in Masters Saga and New Generation merchandise is limited at best. Their one accomplishment in the past twenty-four years, the Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles movie, used the promise of revealing the fate of the Macross Saga cast as its primary selling point, and both the cliffhanger end and leaked draft leave no doubt that they intend to continue dangling the promise of Macross Saga characters in front of the dwindling fanbase to keep them interested. Their fear, which is extremely well-founded, is that if they announce they can't use Macross characters and mecha in the Shadow Rising movie and live-action movie, that interest in the movies will collapse and take their franchise with it. Considering that most of these guys at least claim to have been Robotech fans before joining up at Harmony Gold, you have to stop and wonder if they've just become so used to accepting obvious falsehoods during the time as fans that they've come full circle and believe the lies they're telling. Well, okay... you've got us there... they can always take THAT road. Of course, I think the implication was the use of the designs in new material, but whatever... lol

Of course, that isn't stopping MEMO from spreading half-remembered, mostly-false accounts of the AOD panel and what Tommy said as though by distorting it and taking it out of context he could overturn the court rulings and change the way the copyright laws work and give Harmony Gold the ability to use material from Macross in derivative works, which they have NEVER had the right to do. If PTH actually calls MEMO out on this latest bit of bullshit, I may very well be forced to reconsider my position on his recent bout of intelligent behavior.

I'm astonished the miasma of stupidity that perpetually surrounds him didn't suffocate you. And that brings me nicely around to prerequisite #2 for being a long-time Robotech fan... you must either be totally ignorant of the show's origins, or be deep enough in denial that you can rationalize the show's origins as something other than an attempt to imitate the success of Transformers and sell lots of transforming robot toys without having to do much, if any, actual creative work.

Well, thanks for wasting a few minutes of your time on our behalf to let us know that the Robotech's 25th promises to be every bit as anticlimactic as we predicted. Honestly, I'm not. If they didn't try to present Shadow Chronicles and the various MPC Beta repaints as new each year they wouldn't have anything to show at all, and that would make for a pretty pathetic booth and panel. Of course, what they're doing now is just as pathetic, but a little less obvious to the casual viewer. If it weren't for the fact that it's the 25th anniversary this year, I'd wonder why they were wasting the money to fly Tommy and company around the country for these conventions. It doesn't accomplish anything. Now there's an obvious bit of misdirection if ever I saw one... It looks like he's trying to, intentionally or otherwise, blur the distinction between merchandise and derivative works in the eyes of the audience by referring to toys as "productions" rather than "products". He's done it before, and it fooled nobody last time either. All the legal documentation and other evidence available indicates quite clearly that Harmony Gold is perfectly at liberty to produce merchandise based on the original Macross series and DYRL, because they hold the merchandising rights to those shows outside of Japan. It seems like Tommy's attempting to generalize his way out of the second issue... their ability to use the character designs. It's impossible for Harmony Gold to use the original Macross (or DYRL) character and mechanical designs in derivative works (animation, live action) because those designs are the copyrighted property of Big West and Studio Nue... neither Harmony Gold nor Tatsunoko Productions have any right to them. The court rulings made sure that wasn't open to debate. It's entirely possible for Harmony Gold to use the Southern Cross and Mospeada designs in derivative works, since those are the property of their partner Tatsunoko. Harmony Gold's original Robotech creative director (Carl Macek) even went on record at Robocon 10 back when he was still working on the franchise to say that they had to redesign the Macross characters for Robotech II: the Sentinels because they couldn't use the originals. Tommy's trying to sidestep the matter by being obtuse. At one convention panel, Tommy tried to claim Macross was inferior because, according to him, Robotech had been fansubbed into Japanese. All attempts to find this alleged Japanese fansub of Robotech failed.