Seto Kaiba

Ah well, I'll take my content where I can get it... at least the Macross II material is being covered in the glossary sheet, even though we've had precious few mechanic sheets and half of the U.N. Spacy material has yet to even get touched on. I guess it was inevitably they'd cram them all onto one sheet... though I wonder if we'll get both battlepods and powered suits on the same page, or they'll do a two-page spread for it. I'd hope for the latter, but sadly suspect the former.

No, the saying goes nothing like that... it's "close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades", and it's Semtex, not "symtex".

While that would be incredibly awesome, I think the anachronic presentation of the story would probably be a huge hurdle for any attempt at an animated series. It might work well in print, but in cinema it doesn't work quite so well.

It was Clash of the Bionoids, not Attack of the Bionoids... and it was a heavily edited version released under Celebrity Entertainment's "Just for Kids" line. I've never seen it myself, but I've heard the dub was atrocious, and nearly thirty minutes of footage were removed, including part of the ending to make it look like Hikaru died.

Granted, the Macross's original designation of Alien StarShip One results in an unintentionally offensive abbreviation (ASS-1) because of language differences is amusing in a juvenile sort of way, it has nothing at all to do with the topic at hand... that's really an issue for Super Dimension Fortress Macross and to a lesser extent Macross Zero. It doesn't really have any bearing on the Macross Frontier movie. Hmmm... yet another book I'm tempted to buy now. Curse my holiday-crippled budget!

Now that would definitely be a more promising situation for Macross fans... having the rest-of-world Macross distribution and merchandising rights in the hands of a company that actually had a clue how to run a franchise without having to base their entire business plan around keeping the competition out by any means necessary or resorting to chicanery to keep their fanbase loyal. Of course, Macross fans will naturally see this as a very desirable outcome, as it potentially means there's one less obstacle to stateside Macross licensing. For Robotech fans, this is nothing less than a nightmare scenario, as losing the Macross license essentially means the end for Harmony Gold's Robotech franchise. Not only is the Macross series far and away the most popular part of Robotech, almost all of Harmony Gold's Robotech merchandise is Macross-based. Without the Macross license, the story of the "original 85" falls apart, and their merchandising plans collapse.

Eh, I doubt it... I think he tried to cover too much in response to that one question and confused himself, or that what he said didn't come out like he intended it. We can confirm that they acquired the rest-of-world merchandising rights for the DYRL movie easily enough, but they've never even alluded to having any rights beyond that in any official statement, nor have they ever announced or even alluded to having the distribution rights during the actual content portion of their panel discussions. After all the noise they made about the AnimEigo release Macross and the ADV dub of same, that they would keep quiet about having the distribution rights to DYRL makes no sense whatsoever. Very tempting... I probably would, though I seldom attend conventions and killed my travel budget altogether until the economy stabilizes a bit.

If, by some strange means, Harmony Gold had actually acquired the distribution rights to DYRL, I very much doubt they would keep it quiet. Quite the contrary, in fact. It's odds-on they'd do their level best to cash in on such a notorious title in every way possible, including DVD and Blu-Ray releases, and a veritable marketing blitz at their convention panels. Instead, the only rights that Tommy Yune ever mentions them acquiring are the merchandising rights, which fits perfectly with their behavior, releasing a handful of DYRL merch as Macross collectibles and otherwise just sweeping the whole affair under the rug.

Um... where exactly in that video? I skipped to the 4 minute mark and was unable to locate any remarks as to Harmony Gold's ability/inability to release DYRL in the US and abroad. All he does say is that Harmony Gold acquired the merchandising rights to DYRL outside of Japan after news reports of the Macross legal situation in Japan prompted them to check with Tatsunoko to see if the rights they had acquired under license had been affected in any way. EDIT: Found it... but he doesn't elaborate on it... he says they can "release it as a product" but then only talks about the merchandising rights to the movie. The only rights he actually says they acquired are the "rest of world" merchandising rights to the movie... which makes me think that the "release it as a product" line is a goof and he meant to say "release products based on it". Well yes, but this isn't news... we already know that. Because they don't... I don't think they've ever claimed to have the distribution rights to it. If they had, Macross fans would probably be a lot less ill-disposed towards them, given a high-quality DYRL release in the US.

My guess would be those plans fell through when they found, as AnimEigo's Robert Woodhead put it, nobody knows who actually has the distribution rights to the movie anymore. About the only way to figure out who had them would be to try and release it and see if anybody tried to take you to court for it...

No problem. Glad I could help. A lot of the "borrowing" from DYRL is done with very little in the way of rhyme or reason, and seems to work mainly on "rule of cool", where so long as it looks better than what it's replacing it's all good. It's done mainly to the Zentradi, and I think the reason behind it is that the DYRL designs are somewhat less recognizably human, and appear more technologically advanced than their TV series counterparts, which lets them play up how advanced the Protoculture was, and more recently, their significant mastery of biological and biotechnological engineering. The few applications of this to human technology and designs have all been given neat, tidy rationalizations that mainly belong to the "it was a movie" category, particularly as "later technologically upgraded version used in the filming of the movie". Don't worry about it... we were all there once.

Not so good at spotting humor, are ya? Yes, we know that the show's producers did it for a reason, and the joke reflects that... I don't have any problem with most of the Macross II destroids... they're background mecha anyway, and get barely any screentime, but they're a reasonably logical set of designs considering the available technological advancements since SW1. Put that in the past tense and you've got something... they already concocted their excuse.

Eh, I think going balls-out with the main engines could PROBABLY do the job slowly though it would burn most if not all of the VF-1's fuel, which is essentially what we see in the series. I think they were trying to come up with a more elegant, less "brute force" way for it to be done. If the clear implication weren't that it'd had that system all along, I'd have no trouble accepting it under the auspices of an evolutionary upgrade (ala VF-1X). If memory serves, the VF-4 also has the ability to get into orbit under its own power, though the process burns almost the entire onboard fuel supply. More or less my assessment as well...

It does seem a bit extreme, doesn't it? They have a sound rationale for doing so (putting all the "newbie" questions in one easily searchable thread to prevent a RT.com-esque proliferation of new threads for the same old questions), but they could stand to be a wee bit less dismissive about it. You may find the Search option in the upper right helpful in the future, it's quite useful so long as you remember to set it to search for stuff beyond the last 30 days. Essentially, DYRL is still a "movie-within-the-universe", a non-canon dramatization of Space War 1 done for propaganda purposes in the 2030s. I'd also classify it as a "pseudocanon" version of Space War 1. The TV series version is generally held to be the "correct" version for main continuity Macross, but the "truth" of Space War 1 is, at least according to Kawamori, somewhere inbetween. Macross's creators seem to prefer a number of DYRL designs to their TV series campy counterparts, and have been retroactively replacing them where appropriate... like the Meltrandi warships from DYRL replacing the purple-painted Zentradi ships of the TV series. There are also a number of instances of mix and match between the two, like the documentary episode of Macross 7, which shows the actor playing Vrltiwhai using his DYRL look, but the actor playing Quamzin using his TV series uniform, or the use of both types of Zentradi body armor by the 33rd Marines in Macross Frontier. I guess it could be summed up briefly as "the truth is somewhere between SDF Macross and DYRL, with a bias toward the TV series". The "parallel world" continuity to which Macross II: Lovers Again belongs takes a much less ambiguous road about it... making DYRL the canon version of Space War 1 and tossing the TV series altogether, but for one or two notable uses of TV series mechanical designs as the basis for new designs in that universe.

What that is is a cheaply-manufactured convention-exclusive knockoff of the Macross 25th Anniversary VF-1, with Strike packs. The paint scheme is almost a direct copy of the 25th Anniversary VF-1, as is the design of the toy itself, though I believe it's a smaller scale than the original. Harmony Gold stealing everything that isn't nailed down, as usual. Honestly, I don't think there's any way for Harmony Gold to exploit this one... and it'll probably be overturned on appeal anyway. The British court's logic appears to be something along the lines of "props of generic or utilitarian design aren't art because their distinguishing traits are trivial or nonexistent". The Imperial Stormtrooper armor may be familiar, but it's not exactly distinctive in and of itself, it's just gloss-white plastic body segments and a fairly bland helmet. If you saw someone wearing white glossy body armor, you couldn't immediately point to that and say "that's from Star Wars" and expect to be correct. I don't think the ruling could even be extended to anything props which are distinctively Star Wars, like C-3PO's face, or the helmets worn by Darth Vader and Boba Fett, or a distinctive character from another series like the Dalek from Doctor Who. I don't think this ruling could be applied outside of background props in live-action movies... let alone to a whole other type of cinema. The majority of the Macross designs ARE distinctively Macross, so I don't think there'll be any worries there. As it stands, the judge limited the scope of the ruling to only within the UK, so it's a non-issue where it actually matters (the US), where the guy actually didn't even bother to defend the lawsuit because he knew he'd lose. I have to agree with Lucasfilm's argument though, the stormtrooper armor design is a fairly integral part of the story of Episode IV, it's part of the movies as a whole, and therefore is art by dint of being a component of a piece of cinematic art. I get the feeling that the courts see Lucasfilm's copyright on such a generic design to be open to all kinds of abuses, like to sue other filmmakers for any generic design that looks even remotely similar. They haven't done so, but I think that's probably what the court is thinking. And oh boy does it ever... but again it's only applicable to prop designs with a "utilitarian" purpose, so it's kind of vague in and of itself, and will probably end up overturned on its next appeal. Oh, he'll try... he'll no doubt "forget" that the scope of the UK judge's ruling only covers the UK. They're not saying that Lucasfilm's copyright on it isn't valid, just that it's being treated differently inside the UK. If that guy tried to take his stuff outside the UK again, he'd be open for another lawsuit like the one he already lost against Lucasfilm in the US. Since this case only applies to props of "utilitarian" purpose, I don't think it could be rationally applied to Macross in any way, as virtually all of Macross's mechanical designs are distinctive and figure into the story in fairly major ways at one point or another, and none of them are utilitarian background props in a live-action movie.

The term Meltran/Meltrandi is exclusive to Macross: Do You Remember Love? and Macross II: Lovers Again wherein the timeline has the all-male Zentradi forces fighting the all-female Meltrandi. In the main continuity shows, the term "Zentradi" is used to refer to both males and females, who are fighting on the same side against the Supervision Army. Ranka is indeed 1/4 Zentradi, though exactly which side of her family the Zentradi blood comes from, and whether it comes from a male or female main continuity Zentradi is unknown.

Oh absolutely . In all seriousness, my point was that it makes a great deal more sense for the next-generation destroid to be an evolution of the previous design generation, as in the case of the Macross II destroids, rather than a throwback to one of the earliest (known) destroid designs. Stylistically, upgunning the 50 year old Cheyenne to pass it off as "new" is about as logical as attaching road effects, flame decals, and a big chrome spoiler to an old powder-blue Nissan Stanza. I stand by my theory that the Frontier fleet is using remodeled ADR-03 Cheyennes because they blew their entire defense budget on VF-25s and keeping SMS on the payroll. To sum it up nicely... "more dakka", though the rollers in the feet were a nice touch, and it's the first appearance of that particular design choice in Macross (though that doesn't necessarily indicate the Cheyenne and Cheyenne II's use of that feature was inspired by Macross II). Excellent examples, though the earliest example (chronologically) of Anti-U.N. terrorists exceeding the U.N. forces in developing ground mecha would be the two shield-enhanced destroid Monsters used on the planet Bellfan in 2030 in Macross M3.

It doesn't make much sense from an in-universe perspective, does it? Instead of having updated versions of the existing Space War 1-era family of destroids or a new model of destroid designed specifically for use in colony fleets, the Frontier fleet uses a "redesigned" version of a pre-Space War 1 predecessor of the original ADR-04 Defender series... a model of destroid that's been obsolete for a good fifty years. The explanation that the Cheyenne II is an a jack-of-all-trades since they bolted a pair of beam guns, some small missile launchers, and a few small rocket engines to it screams "This is an excuse to justify reusing an existing design!". The only part of it that actually makes sense is that the wheels in the feet don't wreck up the pavement like a giant walking robot would... though it does leave you wondering why they're more worried about destroids inside the dome ruining the pavement when their job is ostensibly to stop the enemy from ever getting inside in the first place. You'd think once there was fighting inside the dome itself, pavement damage would be the least of their worries. As far as the Spartan goes, it's really no surprise that one was an evolutionary dead-end. Once VFs were durable enough to saunter into close-quarters combat with the Zentradi and not embarrass themselves, the MBR-07 Spartan was, for all practical purposes, redundant. Yeah... that's pretty likely IMHO. The destroids in Macross Frontier were always going to be minor background units, so why bother spending a lot of time and money building an all new CG model for something that's only going to get like five minutes of screen time across a 25 episode series? Still... it doesn't make a lick of sense where the technological continuity is concerned. Maybe they should've taken some pointers from the Macross II mechanical designers and done it anyway. "Standardized designs"? I could see that being true if the Cheyenne weren't a fifty year old, obsolete design, and if we hadn't seen in Macross 7 that the Space War 1-era destroids are still in use for a variety of purposes. Maybe after blowing all their money on the VF-25 and SMS the Frontier Government had to cheap out on their anti-aircraft defenses, and that's why they've got souped-up antiques on the battlefield.

Bleh... I'll never get past how UGLY the Gundam 00 movie designs are. The only one that's not sinfully ugly is the 00 Qan[T], and that's just because it's a rehash of the GN-0000/7S 00 Gundam Seven Sword from Mobile Suit Gundam 00V. The rest... yuck.

Y'know, if they hadn't ascribed velocities in excess of Mach 7.2 to it and just stuck to the old Mach 3.87 figure I could've totally seen it as being not only practical, but possibly canon. Instead, it just blows the old high-altitude figure out of the water entirely, which leaves me shaking my head. The hybrid engine concept has been around for ages, so it would make a great deal of sense. Apart from the stated speed, that's the other thing that spoils the VF-1 ramjet/scramjet thing for me... that the next-gen fighter (the VF-4) has separate ramjet systems built into the wing surface inboard of the nacelles... if they had the tech to build them right into the main reaction engines, why have a separate system? As for the rocket engines, I think Talos said it best in my chat with him when he said the VF-4 (a nominally space-specialized VF) is essentially a VF-1 Strike Valkyrie with all the external hardware built into the airframe instead.

Yeah, that was one of the things that really caught my attention when Talos showed me his copy, I'd always wondered exactly how far the semi-submersible Prometheus could submerge, and seeing it running with just the bridge tower above water for stealth purposes was wicked cool... though what really got my attention was, yes, the ramjet/scramjet diagrams and explanations from the book. Not exactly canon, but a great application of theory and so practical I found myself wondering why the show's creators hadn't thought of that back in the 80s. Yeah, though the various contradictions with the previously established, far more credible publications really kind of spoils that part for me, like retconning Hikaru's VF-1J into a Block 4 model (when it had previously been a Block 5) and making some of the later fighters Block 7 models despite their lack of the appropriate cockpit layout... it just doesn't make sense.

No... it's one of these, which only show up in Love Drifts Away (Super Dimension Fortress Macross ep27). If memory serves, the nickname "Funny Chinese" comes from the Macross Model Hobby Handbook.

I only just ordered a copy of the Master File a little bit ago since I was kind of hesitant to purchase seemed to be just an updated version of the Sky Angels book, and only moved on it after a lengthy discussion of the book with Talos. I'd say, given the sheer number of contradictions with established canon (speed, armament, models, block variations, flightsuits, number of ARMDs) and the amount of stuff that is new and never-before-seen (ramjet/scramjet mode, some of the new variants like the VF-1G and VF-1N), and other perplexing goofs, that in terms of accuracy the Master File leaves something to be desired... particularly since in a few places in the development history section it seems to borrow from alternate universe sources pertaining to Macross II's backstory. Is it a canon resource? No. Is it particularly accurate with respect to the established stats and history? No. Is it cool as hell? Yes. Enough that I was willing to plunk down my money for it and spring for EMS shipping, and I'm not the sort to normally go for non-canon sources.

Y'know, I somehow interpreted this as an off-topic comment about how Blame! when I was skimming this topic... Any sane or logical person could say the same... it's not just the constant caps-lock shouting, it's the conspiracy theorist logic he's using.

Well, if the "2nd Edition" RPG is any real indication, the answer to that question is "no". It seems like once Harmony Gold actually started paying attention to what their licensees were doing, their licensees started actually drawing their own art. *starts in with the first verse of "Dude looks like a Lady"* I'm not convinced those heady days weren't just a hallucination brought about by overindulging in the "flowers of life". Drama's the only way they can keep the attention of the remaining fans. They've got no new products coming out in the foreseeable future, no continuation of Shadow Chronicles, the live-action movie's a distant "maybe" on the horizon, and the Masterpiece Collection is stalled due to that recall of the Maia Sterling VF/A-6ZX, so about the best they can do to make it look like exciting things are happening is to throw a bloody hissy fit whenever someone questions that the LAM or Shadow Rising is being worked on in hopes that a sufficient show of outrage will present the illusion of "We've got so much awesome stuff and we're totally pissed off that we can't show it to you, so stop getting on our asses about it". We're not bagging on him specifically, we're largely criticizing the tendency that MOST Robotech comics had to trace whatever they could from Macross artbooks instead of drawing their own material. Kinda sorta already done... it's called The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. In the foreword (written by no less a nutjob than Carl Macek), they attempt to spin their involvement in all of the various Robotech failures as them being victims of circumstance, with the sole exception of Robotech 3000, where Carl Macek ALMOST actually acknowledges the show went under because Harmony Gold didn't have a farting clue what the fans wanted... but he also lumps a lot of blame on Netter Digital. I think they were genuinely trying to distract people from actually reading the foreword though, since all the actual text is crammed into the bottom third of each page, and top two-thirds is full of screen captures and MPC boxart done by Tommy Yune. The book is mysteriously mute on the subject of Macross II and Macross Plus though. I gathered that the book wasn't exactly a big seller... it didn't even sell out on Robotech.com, and the few bookstores to carry it still seem to have most of their stock collecting dust in a warehouse somewhere. Even old-time Robotech fans seemed thoroughly dissatisfied by it, as I was able to obtain a copy in pristine condition (opened once, then thrown aside in disgust by its original owner) for a dollar at a local garage sale... and let me tell you I genuinely think I overpaid by at least $0.75. I thought it was kind of amusing that almost all of the actual information was reprinted (unedited) directly out of the Infopedia, and while Tommy and Carl are the only names on the cover, the back of the book lists a fair half-dozen others who did most of the actual writing.