Seto Kaiba

Secrets of Robotech revealed... the Haydonites are the author-insertion fantasy personas for the Harmony Gold marketing department.

Because Harmony Gold's writers don't know how to write a compelling, or even mildly interesting, story. Most of what they've written is stilted, awkward, and boring, to such a degree that if they didn't obviously intend for the whole thing to be taken seriously, you'd think the whole plot was a deliberately campy parody. Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles is truly Plan 9 from Harmony Gold. Of course, one could also adopt the obvious answer that if the Haydonites acted with a modicum of common sense and just destroyed the REF forces and Earth on their own instead of engaging in elaborate shadow play (pun intended), they could've accomplished their goal quickly and easily, leaving the terminally-inept protagonists high and dry. That is, of course, not really the best of options to fit with Robotech, since Robotech is generally about humanity holding the moral and cultural high ground stomping out whole alien civilizations. Honestly, Robotech's United Earth Forces are exactly the sort of human-o-centric evil empire that most sci-fi stories have the protagonists fighting against, and when you view it in that light, McKinney's portrayal of the REF as being the (unintentional) root of all evils really is lulzy in the extreme. (and if they really ARE just adapting McKinney's EOTC stuff, doesn't that ultimately make the Haydonites the good guys, since they're trying to kill off the cause of all the suffering, oppression, and evil in the universe by destroying the stable time loop?) I could also be brutally frank and point out that the retcons which established the Haydonites as the current Big Bad are, first and foremost, a weak attempt to shift the blame for the narrowly-averted genocide in the last episode of the New Generation somewhere other than Rick Hunter, the darling of the die-hard fans.

So... wait... if Minmei is the mother of the Zentradi and Tirolan races...and her songs are like lullabies for them, doesn't that mean she's the mother of a bunch of alien masochists?

For the most part, the original destroids were glorified anti-aircraft guns, so it's no surprise that they haven't really bothered doing much with them since. The only Macross show that really bothered with showing more destroids was Macross II, and those destroids were, like their predecessors, essentially glorified anti-aircraft guns permanently assigned to point defense on ships, or anti-air defense on the ground. Didn't Hikaru briefly use a Spartan?

The most accurate romanization of the name of one of the non-transformable mecha from Macross II. It's basically a GERWALK-pattern destroid toting a shitload of missiles. So far Chronicle has only covered it in the Glossary sheet.

Okay, so he confirmed what anyone with their head screwed the right way 'round concluded the minute they heard the movie was supposed to be a "re-imagining"... that it's going to bear pretty much no resemblance to Macross or the Macross Saga, and that the only familiar things will be a couple of "iconic" names. Isn't that pretty much how everyone with an ounce of common sense still views the movie? As a long-shot that probably will never see release? Probably more towards "thoroughly disappointed", since ignorant blokes like Maverick_LSC and MEMO1DOMINION have been abusing their authority on Robotech.com to make erroneous claims that Harmony Gold can and will use any and all of the intellectual property of Macross as the basis for the movie. They're inadvertently setting the fans up for a major disappointment if and when the movie actually comes out. Considering that, according to Tommy and the various voice actors, the further animated projects are all on hold while they wait on the live-action movie to open up better sponsorship prospects, it seems like they're digging themselves a new grave. If the LAM goes under, we can probably expect another 20 year release drought from Harmony Gold (yay!).

Meh... somehow I can't bring myself to get excited about this one. Too much Macross Dynamite 7 for my tastes.

Legally, they SHOULD be able to... they own the trademark on the name in the US. My guess would be that they're avoiding anything that could potentially provoke Big West into taking legal action against them. If they lose the "Macross" name trademark, they lose their sandbagged wall keeping the rest of Macross out of the United States.

Well, yes... in the alternate universe continuity there are more models of Zentradi and Meltrandi mecha out there, but they're mainly just variations on the basic designs of the Nosjaedul-Ger, Queadluun-Rau, and Glaug. The only times the Zentradi of the alternate universe are known to have designed their own mecha (like Quamzin's Migg Pitt) the renegade cultured Zentradi were involved.

Yeah, when compared to pretty much any competently-run franchise, Robotech really is bereft of news of any importance. Did you see what they had to resort to in order to stir up something for the front page news section? Steve Yun went to Reactor in Chicago to moderate a "which character could beat up which character" open debate. That was the best they could do for a news piece. In a situation like that, I guess it's only natural for the few remaining Robotech fans to make a big deal about every trivial piece of news that comes out. After all, it's the only way they can convince themselves that they're not wasting their time on a dead franchise. I, for one, fully expect the next major news piece will be Warner announcing that they've put the live action movie on indefinite hiatus.

Give it time, we'll come up with some more drama sooner or later. In the mean time, we can all have a chuckle over the horrible art of the old Robotech comics.

Y'know, the thing that bothers me the most about this isn't the half-baked attempt to make Minmei sexier, it's the smile. At the angle it's at, it looks like a goddamn blow-up doll. And that's just terrible.

Y'know, the men in that "swimsuit spectacular" don't horrify me nearly as much as the women. Even the most modestly endowed women look like She-Hulk, and every single one was given a massive set of hooters. Eh, any rage against HG is good rage, I guess.

Now if only that general apathy and indifference extended to ignoring the asinine and often delusional views and claims of the Robotech lunatic fringe, a group that also answers to the name of "the Robotech core fanbase". The majority of the fans aren't bad, but the vocal die-hards really do Robotech's already-poor reputation no favors. Some of them are so unwilling to cope with the reality that Robotech is not original, that it isn't popular, and that Harmony Gold doesn't own its contents, that they prefer to live in a fantasy world where it all isn't true.

If the response from the long-time Battletech/MechWarrior fans is anything to go by, that may not be entirely accurate. Still, very amusing how we all essentially posted the same thing within 20 minutes of each other, starting with me.

I'm assuming you mean Jordan Weisman, the founder of both FASA Interactive and Smith & Tinker, the latter of which currently has the video game rights to MechWarrior? Unfortunately, the hypothetical scenario you're posing is an impossible one. Since video games are technically merchandise, not derivative works, neither Big West nor Studio Nue would be able to authorize the use of the destroid designs from the original series in the forthcoming MechWarrior game. In exchange for their assistance animating the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series, Tatsunoko Productions received the exclusive right to distribute the series and produce merchandise based on it outside of Japan, and later licensed those rights to Harmony Gold USA. Because of that, the only party who can give Smith & Tinker permission to use the destroid designs from the original Macross series in MechWarrior games (assuming those games are sold outside of Japan) is Harmony Gold. Big West and Studio Nue can't do it because they'd be Tatsunoko's (and therefore, Harmony Gold's) rights if they did, which would almost certainly culminate in a lawsuit. Now if we were talking a Battletech or MechWarrior movie or TV series... then the situation is reversed, as only Big West/Studio Nue can authorize the use of those designs in motion pictures, and Tatsunoko and Harmony Gold can only sit on their hands and gripe loudly about it.

Nah, that would actually require licensing royalties... they'll just do what they always do, and remix the same old music.

Not quite... Harmony Gold can't use the intellectual property (incl. character and mecha designs) of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series in derivative works... namely animated or live-action TV and movies. They CAN use those designs in merchandise, because they have the "rest-of-world" merchandising rights to the series through Tatsunoko Productions. Because of the way the law is written, things like narrative forms like comic books, video games, and novels are all technically merchandise, and thus Harmony Gold can use the Macross designs in those.

Where's that from?

Actually, it's more like: "None of these people can even produce a weak imitation of Haruhiko Mikimoto's style... and that makes them even more pathetic than AnimeFriend and StarPro."

Y'know, on second thought, Minmei would probably have been a lot more tolerable as a can of soda made from slug secretions than what the Waltrips made her into. It was disturbing enough seeing the character with DD's, but having Edwards shouting about her promiscuity and how bad she was in bed while trying to murder Kyle/Kaifun was just plain unsettling.

Y'know, I really hate this automatic word censoring system. >_<

Those are from the "Swimsuit Spectacular" issue of the Robotech II: the Sentinels comic books published under Eternity/Malibu. It's a pretty good example of what the character designs were like for the Sentinels comics... the Waltrips clearly didn't have a clue what a normal human body looks like, and weren't too comfortable drawing normally-proportioned people either... so as a result everyone is ultra-buff most of the time, and the women have absurd, almost Leifeld-esque proportions. Of course, since they were also building on the Sentinels character designs, everyone looks like a goddamn idiot too. (Remember, these are the same people who, in an effort to make Robotech a bit more "mature", turned Minmei into a gutter skank, among other things)

MY EYES! THEY BURN!

No kidding... there's a lot of good vocal work on those albums.