ewilen

I'm wondering...what source(s) does Ronin Network cite for their "SSM-1" information?

Iliad boring...probably true...not many people are going to read it unless it's for a class. But a huge chunk of tedium can be eliminated by skipping the chapter that lists all the ships. If you do decide to tackle it, I recommend the Lattimore translation--it captures the feel of the original poetry. And to clear up a possible misconception: I don't know about this movie, but the Iliad doesn't tell the complete story of the Trojan War. The poem only covers a short episode 10 (?) years into the war, and only one of the really famous characters dies. Other deaths, and the fall of Troy, are foreshadowed but don't appear "on screen". Slate has an article about the problem of casting Helen. Personally, I think they should have tried harder to get Laetitia Casta for a truly beautiful Mediterranean look. The woman they got only rates a fraction of a millihelen.

Point taken, although the evidence for the way the Myceneans used chariots (as opposed to the Egyptians and Hittites) is extremely limited. Also, I think I got the iron swords bit wrong. (It's been a long time since I read the Iliad.)

It really does look great. I hope Yamato comes through with something similar eventually.

Really? Homer himself gets them wrong in the Illiad.... ?? The Iliad is about events which "occurred" in the late Mycenaean period or early Dark Ages of Greece. IIRC the description of tactics in the Iliad is reasonably plausible given what we know about the period (which isn't much). If there's a major error in the poem, the only one I can think of is the use of iron swords--they should be bronze. Maybe you can elaborate, Max. As for the film, I guess I'm not going to see it.

Just want to be more specific about the dubs I've liked--the Lupin III I'm referring to is the TV series episodes shown on Adult Swim. The dubbing is done really well; I also assume there are some loose translations in many of the jokes, but those are also well done. Speaking of accents, I just remembered that they give Zenigata a vaguely countrified accent; I don't recall if it bothered me at first, but it doesn't now. However, I always watch Castle of Cagliostro in sub.

Not so crazy about the look. Even if they want to go in a different direction from Robotech Battlecry, this stuff just looks too hard edged, angular, and IMO ill-proportioned. Also, there's some kind of problem with the lighting...in the last two pics, the MOSPEADAs look too dark overall, but with excessively shiny highlights, as if they're covered in motor oil.

Very well. While I wouldn't use the term "sickening", I agree that there's a lot of moralizing in anime. Sometimes this gives the impression of trying to impart "universal" lessons which are of limited applicability in reality. But the validity of the moralizing is rather beside the point. At least, before you go off condemning the themes expressed in various anime, you might want to make sure you're talking about what's actually there, instead of caricaturing anime directors and "many Japanese" as misanthropic Luddites who think that "technology in all of it's myriad forms and humans are the Ultimate Evil to the planet". I'll expand on two examples. In Princess Mononoke, although Miyazaki portrays technology and economic development as destructive toward nature, he doesn't demonize them either. In fact, he shows the social benefits of development, such as the fact that Lady Eboshi's Iron Town provides employment and a new life for ex-prostitutes and lepers. As for Wings of Honneamise, it shows a modern world beset by international tension--where technological advances serve to increase the destructive potential of human conflict. It also shows alienation and spiritual decline. However, an astronaut is the hero, and space exploration is shown in a very positive light. In conclusion, both animes may express their themes rather broadly, but they're far from unidimensional.

To add to the speculation: My theory is that "Super Dimension" refers to the ability to Fold, since "Super" = "Hyper" (via translation from Latin root to Greek) and "Dimension" is similar to "Space". Thus "Superdimension" = "Hyperspace". I think my interpretation is supported by the occasionally-seen alternate Engrish title of SDF Macross as "A Fortress Exceeding Time and Space". Besides, Macross was SDF-1 even before anyone got the idea of transforming it. That only happened in Episode 5. OTOH, I could see changing the designation of Megaroad due to the fact that its role was no longer that of a warship. Therefore, the term "Fortress" would be inappropriate. Nevertheless, what you quote from your magazine isn't consistent with the information over at the Macross Compendium. ( http://macross.anime.net/mecha/united_nati...s/Megaroad.html ) So it doesn't seem to be "official" now, if it ever was.

Someone wrote that the flying robots are ripped off from Miyazaki. No--they're ripped off from Max & Dave Fleischer. Specifically, from the "Mechanical Monsters" Superman cartoon, which is known to have influenced Miyazaki.

Mislovrit, I began a response to your post, with examples in support of my points, but first I have to ask--is this directed at me, or at Wings of Honneamise?

But I'm a Mac user (10.2.8; Netscape 7.1) and I seem to recall that I couldn't see it until you made the change...I think maybe there was something else afoot. Anyway, we don't seem to be any closer to solving AgentONE's problem.

I'd say that's going a bit far, Mislovrit. I can think of many anime, in addition to SDF Macross, SC, and Mospeada, that offer a critical view of technology or humanity, but they don't necessarily condemn all technology or all of humanity. E.g., Miyazaki views technological advance as far from an unalloyed good, yet he seems to love both nature and flying machines. In Princess Mononoke (not one of my favorites, but useful as an example) he even shows technological development in a somewhat positive light. If there's a common theme in many anime I think it's more of a critique of the view (rather stereotyped) that "technological progress" will necessarily lead to an improvement of the human condition. To offer another example, Wings of Honneamise certainly offers a negative view of much of modernity but at the same time it portrays space exploration as an opportunity for spiritual uplift and expansion of peace.

I remember The White Drew Carey having some kind of trouble with his photograph. I don't recall what was done to fix it.

Generally, I agree that it's a bad idea to try to use an extreme regional accented form of English to represent a regional dialect of another language. The accents in English just have too much "baggage" attached resulting an a bizarre effect. It's not restricted to anime, by the way. Translations of ancient Greek plays often use Southern English, or even Scottish, to represent the "rustic" sound of the Spartans' Doric dialect vis a vis the urbane Athenians' Attic. The effect is pretty ridiculous. Then again, getting back to anime, I rarely like dubs. Lesseee, FLCL, Lupin III, Reign...and that's about it.

That's an interesting take on things...and all too true, unfortunately.

Pat: actually, I think the pacing of SC works reasonably well, and the ending works for me except for the lack of clarity. (See above & below.) Keith: A majority of the people on the fleet had nothing to do with the decision to nuke Earth. And even the ones that did, were making a hard choice out of desperation. It just seems to me that an enormous sacrifice is passed over with barely any comment. I'm tempted to interpret this as a form of harsh justice--collective punishment for the fleet's "sin" of trying to destroy Earth. As Final Vegeta has argued in another thread about Macross, it seems that a common theme of anime in that era was, if not pacifism, anti-militarism. In each of Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada, the combatants who pursue war most eagerly all end up dying, usually in an apocalyptic flash of light accompanied by thousands or millions of innocents. It's hard not to see a reaction to the Japanese experience of World War II. And if it's correct to see this as a common theme, perhaps the original audience simply didn't need an explanation for something that American audiences might find strange and gratuitous. (Another article on this overall topic can be found here.) Regarding Southern Cross, I don't see how you can be so sure. Yes, Siefriet's personal sacrifice wouldn't make sense if it turns out that the survivors are doomed anyway. Yet the final shot is a healthy protozor plant blooming. At minimum, that looks like a challenge, if not a threat, to the future of the Glorie inhabitants.

http://www.drivesavers.com/ I've never used them, but I'd consider it in your case.

Lindem Herz, thanks for refreshing my memory. Jeleinen, here is one page listing various space programs: http://www.fas.org/spp/guide/index.html It's a bit out of date but it does indicate that as of 1998, China had conducted dozens of successful launches. The European Space Agency has conducted hundreds. I neglected to mention India's progress (detailed here) as well as that of Japan and possibly others. Edit: Mislovrit--please check the attribution on your quotes.

The cost of keeping humans alive in space pretty much guarantees that an automated system for collecting space debris would be cheaper. BTW, France and China are also players in the space game, Knight26. And although we might see privately-run space tourism in the form of suborbital flights for the extremely rich in the near future, I don't know how or why a private company would go to the moon or Mars. What would be the business rationale? I do think that WoH is pretty realistic in terms of science. But in terms of how a space program would actually be done...I don't think so. IIRC, they basically go from zero rocket technology to a manned orbital (?) mission without doing any of the intermediate testing and stepping stones like V-1, Sputnik, dogs/chimps in space, etc. Nevertheless, I love that movie.

A couple of things that I've been wondering about with these shows. Note that I'm talking about the originals, not the Robotech versions. 1. In Mospeada, when the Inbit fly off the planet, they also destroy the incoming warheads which were launched by the Mars Base fleet. Not only that, it looks like they destroy the entire fleet, killing everyone on board. Yet no one seems to comment on this at the end. I wonder what the creators of the show are trying to say, and how the (original) audience reacted to this development? If my point isn't clear, compare Mospeada with Macross (episode 27) and the last episode of Southern Cross. In both of these shows, a huge battle leads to devastation on both sides, but once it's been well established that War is Bad--with unanimity having been achieved by killing all the characters still in favor of war--the fighting ends. In Mospeada, once the Inbit decide to abandon Earth, all they had to do was put the nukes out of commission and then nobody needs to die. The destruction of the fleet is gratuitous. Or is it? 2. The descriptions of Southern Cross that filtered over to the US before the ADV release (look at this and this) claim that the ending of the show tells us that the survivors of the war are going to become Zor. But this is hardly spelled out in the actual show, with the only ominous sign being the sprouting protozor flower in the last shot. (This isn't the only discrepancy between the descriptions and the actual show, by the way. The whole "history" of the Zor's earlier occupation of Glorie is nowhere to be found in the show.) So--what are we to make of this? Is the ending deliberately ambiguous? An opening for a sequel? Or does it clearly say that the colonists will--or won't--end up becoming Zor? The idea that they will definitely become Zor would make for pretty bad storytelling, in my opinion. Not because it's a downer, but simply because it contradicts the overall theme of the story.

It his standard procedure, as can be seen by examining his other auctions. Technically, keyword spamming is against eBay rules, but the way he does it may be just ambiguous enough to get around enforcement.

I doubt there are statistics available but if there were I'm sure it would show that the Masters is by far the least liked of the three original series. OTOH, I take issue with the phrase "turd off a series". I don't remember the RT version well enough, but having recently finished the SC DVD's, I liked it better than Mospeada. (Not that I don't like Mospeada.)

Okay, here are some useful threads: Scale Photo Gallery Scale of destroids and other toys Does eye candy rot yer eyes? 1/48 Valks vs Matchbox Battlepods?

Okay, I'm hampered (A1 would say "blessed") by the fact that I still haven't seen much of M7. There are just all sorts of questions about what the wedding dress figure is supposed to represent, and what version of the M&M story is portrayed in the movie within M7. But the general consensus--which you may not agree with--seems to be that the original intention in DYRL was for Max and Millia to get married as giants. So since the fig is in the DYRL style, I think it's probably 1/60. Anyway, getting any deeper into this is wandering way too far into Comic Book Guy territory...