jeniusornome

We could be due for another Macross OVA at this point, though. The last one was Zero, and who knows what they have planned after this next Delta movie?

I assumed some of those viewing angles were “visual representations of sensor data” and not literal camera views. 

Thanks @Lolicon!

What do you use to tighten them?

looking forward to seeing how your mint toothpaste 25 looks!

Ah, the one hosted on Fandom. Imitation wikipedia.

Those things are usually pretty well maintained by die-hard fans of whatever property. Unsurprisingly the Robotech one hosted there is fairly empty. There's a lot of stuff "coming soon" or "to be added". I assume even the fans can't be bothered to update it.

Bump

Yeah I’d be in for at least one updated VF-25 reissue. Would be nice if they decide to do a few of this sells well. 

I'm not even sure what we're debating, to be honest. I thought the new comic was fun, like... watching a bad sci-fi movie where the characters keep winking at the camera because they also know it is ridiculous.

Let's try this. Set aside all of your opinions about either series for a moment. Here's the pitch:

One of Max and Milia's future children pulls a back to the future and accidentally gets stuck in a 1985 where Biff runs the city from a Casino. She needs to get her parents together to make sure she still exists, find her missing uncle and his magic singing girlfriend and stop the alternate reality versions of her mother from killing everyone. Along the way she'll also make fun of all the things that didn't make sense before, tear apart established continuity and "canon", raise her step-siblings from her Dad's (mystery) wife and her own best friend, and oh BTW there are ZOMBIE ZENTRADIS.

It sounds absolutely ridiculous. Also hilarious, maybe hilariously bad, but if it's written well, it could be a lot of fun. That might actually be sustainable in another property (something Marvel, DC, whatever) with a larger built-in fanbase / larger mainstream appeal. "What if Superman grew up in the USSR? What if the radioactive spider bit Gwen Stacy instead of Peter Parker?" But Robotech is not mainstream (despite die hard fans belief otherwise) and so it was dismissed by the Robotech die-hard fans, derided by Macross fans, and completely ignored by everyone else.

Doing this to a property with a dwindling, insular fanbase, who generally don't like changes to the status quo, there was really no hope for it to make it far. I mean, even the "Robotech Wiki" says that the 2017 comic is following along more closely with "Carl Macek's original vision" and that's a big part of the problem - continued insistence that there was some big grand plan for this whole thing, like there's a big dusty tome with 365 episodes worth of Robotech plot fully written out in it somewhere. What's left of the fanbase takes that just so seriously that they don't want to see anything that deviates even slightly from it. The only "complete" telling of it that ever happened was the McKinney novels, which just... weren't very good in the first place.

I honestly don’t know how this conversation is still continuing, but if you guys could take the back and forth “I like things that glorify war” and “I do not” to private messages it would be great.

i realize it is tangentially about Macross and Robotech, but you’re just going around in circles now. There’s plenty of sci fi media available that is idealistic and plenty that isn’t, but that has nothing to do with a failed attempt at “yet another Robotech something“.
 

to me the best example of the difference between Macross and Robotech:

in Macross, when they attack Bodolza’s fleet, Minmay sings “love slips away” - a song about how you might lose your love over time, probably written when she realized that Hikaru and her are never going to be together the way they were before.

In Robotech, she sings “we will win,” which is a call to arms, a generic rousing battle anthem and nothing more, because the writers of this version either didn’t understand or didn’t care about the total cognitive dissonance of that scene in Macross being the whole point.

BUT it is important to specify here: it doesn’t matter that they missed the point of Macross, for whatever reason, because they weren’t just translating Macross. They were writing Robotech, which was an entirely different show that just happened to include a bunch of ideas that were largely similar to those in Macross because they were using the same animation. Don’t think of them as different versions of the same story - they are different stories entirely.

@Podtastic If you haven’t seen the anime “crest of the stars” and the follow up shows (banner of the stars, and I think battleflag of the stars) you might like it. It’s a late 90s show but I remember it being pretty good and having a lot of Sci fi military elements to it. 
 

@Seto Kaiba from what I read of these I would say... yes? Maybe?

thing about Robotech is, after all this time, there’s only two complete sets of media for it - the original show and the McKinney novels. Everything else couldn’t even finish the run when they tried to simply retell that story, which I think is a telling sign for how much it doesn’t hold up. 

the original show was an 80s cartoon so let’s just accept that it wasn’t great, despite what some people remember, like any 80s cartoon. Where it falls in your personal rankings of 80s cartoons is irrelevant. 

the McKinney novels were... phoned in at best? I read them fairly recently to see how they actually stacked up against my memories of them (I last read them in high school, which was long enough ago). It reminded me a lot of reading some of the... less professional Star Trek, Star Wars and D&D novels. The ones that read like fanfics. There was nothing really standout in any of them.

thing is, the elements in those books, whether they came from abandoned notes Carl Macek left in a filing cabinet somewhere, or half written scripts, or whatever, those stuck and created a framework that Robotech hasn’t really strayed from. People can complain it was cliche or the ideas were lifted from show X or whatever, but again, for the purposes of this conversation - irrelevant. 
 

so with that in mind, I would say - yes, the attempt to do something more upbeat and Macross-like with these comics was an improvement, however, its not like there’s a really good comparison to be made. Pulling various aspects of Macross shows in (legally or infringingly) made it just seem like a pretty good fanfic, instead of a poorly done one knocked out on the cheap to fill a contract for X books, or meet an order for X shows for syndication.  

IMO the idea of “multiple realities” they presented was a nice way to ignore everything that came before and try to start fresh, but then they got bogged down in everything that came before anyways, so it didn’t really matter.

and I’m saying all this as someone who was basically introduced to anime by Robotech. It’s got a little corner of my nerd heart but there’s not a single example of media for it, original show included, that I’d actually consider good. I wouldn’t even recommend it to anyone for historical value anymore. 

@Seto Kaiba ah, yes, I would completely agree with that - we're just using different terms to refer to the same characters I think.

@Sildani yeah, I'd have to go back and watch it again but I can kinda see that. Although I don't recall if Messer and Keith ever actually met in the show, there are definitely some triangle elements there.

Basically, Delta was way too convoluted for its own good, and likely would have done much better if the series was shorter and they focused on giving less characters more depth, instead of more characters less depth. But it was still fun to watch.

I feel like the "carefree guy shows the uptight girl how to live a little, which leads to potential romance, but meanwhile carefree girl and carefree guy are clearly meant for each other anyways" of Mirage / Hayate / Freyja could have been a good triangle, but the way it was played really treated Mirage's character as not even in the running.

More interesting to me would have been a properly developed Messer / Kaname / Arad triangle, but that probably would have required Kaname be the main character, and having Messer die at the halfway point just shuts it all down. Killing him at the end of the show, maybe after the two of them had gotten together, would have been that nice bittersweet ending they've been pulling with some of the characters (Shin disappearing in Zero and leaving Mao, Alto disappearing in the Frontier movies, Michael dying in the Frontier series, etc). Instead they tried to add extra dimensions to his personality right before he died and after he died, when it was like... ah, he's already dead so why are we learning about this now?

I do have to wonder too, who was the best pilot in Delta Flight. They make it seem like it was Messer, so was he a really good pilot before? Was Mirage just so-so and Hayate's natural talent for piloting really grated on her nerves? Where's my cool breakdance fighting battroids after the first episode? Sigh. So much potential.

OTOH, they're basically printing money with Walkure's faces on it, so they're obviously doing something right. And if that means more Macross, that works for me.

Well, for anyone who was wondering why Bandai would reissue Alto’s YF-29 again, this is a pretty good indicator of how popular he / it is.

You know it’s funny - the lists you have there of the 10 “main” characters from each show, the first three you list are the ones I consider the main characters in each series. (Except 7, Ray and Veffidas were just supporting cast IMO, though I see why you listed Fire Bomber first).
 

also interesting, those first three are the triangle in each show. Misa, Hikaru and Minmay. Isamu, Myung and Guld. Basara, Mylene and Gamlin (although this one is debatable as an actual triangle, because Basara didn’t have any interest in Mylene. He sure seemed to like her big sister Emilia though!) Mao, Shin and Sara. Sylvie, Hibiki and Ishtar. Sheryl, Alto and Ranka. 

your full list of main characters in Delta I would have considered about half supporting cast. Main characters I could see:

Hayate, Mirage, Messer, Freyja, Mikumo, Kaname, Keith, Roid and Bogue. Up to 9 from 3. All the rest I’d consider supporting cast.

Triangles I saw them attempting to do in Delta and why they weren’t really triangles:

Freyja / Hayate / Mirage - Freyja and Hayate were obviously supposed to be together from the start. Having Mirage get all mopey because Hayate was her manic pixie dream boy just hurt any real chance at character development for her. The sudden outburst at the end of the series “I love you Hayate!” from Mirage was met with a “wait, what?” from Hayate. He was never interested in her.

Chuck’s sister / Messer / Kaname - Messer was too busy being obsessed stalker type to even notice a character whose name I can’t remember (though I’m sure she did have one). Chuck was supporting cast; his sister was a background character at best. 
 

Messer / Kaname / Arad - this was the only one I could see as there being a pivot point - Kaname seemed to be presented as liking both of them, Arad maybe felt the same for her, and Messer was a little obsessed but I guess I’m a good way? But then Messer died and instead of resolving the triangle the other way they just forgot about it. 
 

There was also a thin attempt at one with the hints of Bogue’s interest in Reina (I assumed with some of the team in Windermere towards the end they were working towards an eventual “Meet cute” between Bogue and Reina which would have given his character another dimension aside from “angry”) and the mostly-implied-but-not-nearly-as-direct-as-the-movie-version of Reina and Makina’s relationship. But it was just played for comic relief instead with him sending her all of his bitcoin accidentally. 
 

Also the Mirage - Makina - Reina one. There was a lot of talk from them about getting her to loosen up, I think there was even a hot springs or bathhouse scene in the movie? But I assumed it was another thin attempt at a setup for fanfic or shipping or whatever. Or just fan service. 

I had to look up some of that but I have to agree with what you’re saying @Seto Kaiba  . Although I thought I read somewhere, maybe an interview or something, where Kawamori or someone was promoting the show as “getting back to the VF vs VF that everyone wants.”

I think it also suffered from “too many characters” syndrome. M7, for all it’s... M7, focused on Mylene, Basara and Gamlin. Other characters got some development and stand out scenes or episodes, but it’s also 52 episodes, a “movie” and a 4 episode miniseries. 
 

Delta was just 26 episodes and they had like 10 main characters. And I think they had 3 love triangles in there too (none of which were really developed as actual triangles).

Okini Land has a preorder page up already if anyone doesn’t feel like waiting and doesn’t mind paying a slight markup to jump the gun ($243).

https://okini.land/en/20987-dx-chogokin-yf-29-durandal-valkyrie-alto-saotome-custom-fullset-pack-bandai-spirits.html

I've seen their preorder prices change based on what other vendors are doing / how PO madness is going, so that price might drop tonight when Amazon, etc put their listings up. 

@Bolt I mean, cel-shaded would probably be "anime accurate"...

Something I'm wondering about with the Delta characters.

Windermere was basically a medieval fantasy planet prior to NUNS finding it.

Xaos is a marketing machine for a pop band.

The aerial knights we meet are an apple farmer, some weirdos with no character development, a literal bastard and a superiority complex.

Delta flight is a retired guy, a fishmonger, a slacker, a washout and an inferiority complex.

These seem to be pretty bad choices for pilots in a show that was supposed to be about VF -on- VF dogfighting.

It was still silly fun to watch, but the more I think about it, the less and less sense any of it makes. I'd have to go back and watch both shows again but I think Macross Seven might have actually been better written / had more coherent characters and plot?

I wonder if there really will be as big a push for this one. It's got some improvements but it's still a reissue of a figure that has stayed consistently available and consistently priced on the secondary market for years now.

If you want it without the headache you can buy it from HLJ - their listing specifically states it is the version with corrected legs. 
 

I keep going back and forth on it. Mostly because I know if I get it I’ll want to track down a VF-0S too. And I’d rather have it in Nora’s colors with a 0A to put opposite it, but the 0A is a whole other leg disaster. 

1S kit:

I assumed that after the SV-51 leg issue we might see some "easy" releases to get them some capital. Not basing it on anything, just making the assumption that "small business" + "unexpected costs" + "other planned releases" = "need to generate some cashflow".

I'd be surprised if they did another Max / Milia run though. HLJ still has them in stock and puts them on sale regularly, so making more of them would just be adding to the pile that hasn't sold yet.

There was some speculation in the grey market thread that the KO company's recent talk of an Angel Bird and Mass Prod 1A could be ahead of Arcadia also announcing those (the KO company seemed to be sticking pretty close to what Arcadia had released recently, hence the speculation). It seems to me that if Arcadia needed cash flow, both of those would be good choices since there haven't been any reissues of the Angel Bird and only two releases of the Mass Prod 1A. The VF-1D would also be an easy seller for them I think. None of them require the SSP to be included, either, so production cost could be lower.

Because it’s a really popular design? It’s had like four reissues so far. 
 

I’ll probably pick up one. I Like that they made some tweaks and haven’t been interested in getting a second hand one due to my experience with the mold. But some stability tweaks and the minor head improvements could be just what it needs. 

Dunno how much you're looking to spend but there's a Yamato VF-19P available at Mandarake for 38k yen. I assume DHL shipping would be another 5-6k.

https://order.mandarake.co.jp/order/detailPage/item?itemCode=1137440173&ref=flist&lang=en'

Good luck in your search.

Hmm. Automated ships prowling the galaxy for resources for factory satellites to keep churning out ships and soldiers... sounds like a Von Neumann problem in the making. I'd guess the protoculture never expected they'd go extinct and didn't put any kind of "stop at X point" programming in place.

Almost seems like NUNS would want to actively seek out and destroy these.

Where do factory satellites get the raw materials they need to keep on rolling out fresh zentradi?