Sundown

Lousy charity? How so?

I prefer... Body massage.

Behold! The Slayer of Threads!

Further analysis: Hikaru's even more grating in some of these clips. Roy sounds fantastic when he's not overacting and trying to be some outrageous cartoon character. Exedol sounds good. Britai sounds like but is inferior to the RT version. Looks like the casting is all pretty much based on the original RT voices, with Misa being the notable exception. Global sounds way too hammy. And yes, I have to say that the RT cast was better, or at least was better directed for the most part. Mari Ijima alone doesn't elevate the lesser performance of the new cast, especially when her accented delivery introduces problems of its own. Sure, we might cut her some slack because she's Mari Ijima, and we might justify why she sounds the way she does, but in the end it just doesn't work as well as a whole for me, at least from what I've heard so far. Maybe she sounds better in other scenes.

Actually, I don't recall Gibson telling anyone explicitly that they should go to church-- at least not in a manner more forceful or direct than one Cruise uses when he tells people they shouldn't use medication or seek psychiatric help, because real help is in Scientology. There is a difference between Tom's opinion and the other celebrity claims here-- his doesn't happen to apply to most of us. You and I aren't dealing with a mental or emotional disorder. But it's not like Tom's thinks to himself in the morning before disparaging Brook Shields, "Hmm, this oughta be okay, so long as I'm not telling Agent One what to do." We don't happen to use medication and we don't happen to need psychiatry, and thus we're not especially bothered or threatened by what he says-- but let's not pretend his statements become innocuous "opinions" just because they don't apply to us, and the opinions of others become "telling us how to live" when they do. For someone who suffers from mental illness, Cruise is doing precisely what you take issue to-- telling people what to do on a subject he is patently unqualified to speak about. In fact, I would consider his to be the most blatant of the examples listed. And lastly, I find his "opinions" much more dangerous than the others cited, because he actually encourages those needing medical help to seek aid in what is essentially a giant pyramid scheme in the guise of a pseudo-scentific-religion. Those who do seek out Scientology for help will find that they can only access "services" and "therapy" for increasingly large amounts of money or by devoting years of their life in grueling, nearly-unpaid service to the "Church". Then after decades or hundreds of thousands of dollars spent in the organization, whichever comes first, they'll find that their problems are simply due to-- Dead alien spirits possessing their bodies. (Of course this isn't told to anyone upfront.) I dunno, but that's just a tad more insidious than someone who might espouse an ultimate truth, a political opinion, or encourages social responsibility by setting an example, even if they choose a tacky manner by which to do it. As well as he thinks he means, Cruise is essentially complicit in Scientology's exploitation of people who are already suffering. Maybe that should at least piss us off as much.

I don't know you. Those were the two I could actually tolerate... although Misa just didn't sound as professional as I'd have liked, and I couldn't feel Misa Hayase nor Lisa Hayes from what I heard. Hikaru is just too breathy, but I don't hate his voice. Claudia sounded fine, and in fact, sounded really, really similar to the original RT Claudia. The translations suck though... her calling Roy's performance "lame" just seemed completely out of place in the middle of combat with an alien menace. "That's pretty weak, Roy." "Frankly, I'm a little dissapointed, Roy." "You're slipping, Roy." are all better options. I dare say that at least some of RT's writing was actually better, if not completely word for word accurate to the original. This all just begs the question... if everything sounds like an even cheesier Robotech, why didn't they just get the original RT voice actors in the first place? -Al

I'm not sure where all the shock over Hikaru's voice selection comes from. It's pretty obvious that Harmony Gold had made up its mind on how an English speaking Hikaru should sound like 20 years ago... And I actually agree with Keith here-- Minmay "should" have a Japanese accent being that she's half Japanese and lives in Japan. But given the way the dub's directed, and the fact that Hikaru, who's full Japanese, doesn't have any accent, it'd probably be better if she didn't have one at all either. I'm not sure the dub should introduce a barrier between the characters that didn't exist in the original unless it can really pull it off. Oh, and apparently, the songs won't be dubbed, because the tracks for the music without vocals is no longer available. Poop.

They sound like... Robotech. Except... And I should probably invest in picthfork and torch stocks before I say this but... I might actually prefer Robotech's version. Roy here sounds like a hammy Disney character without the realistic nuances, and I'm not sure I particularly like Mari's accent for Minmay in an english dub. I'm probably the only one here that thinks Mari's accent is going to be a weak point of this dub as much as she adds to its legitimacy... the way she sounds makes the chemistry between her and Hikaru a little hard to believe, and the directing probably won't be good enough to inject the subtleties now required. And for what it's worth, she sounds nothing like a Chinese girl with a Chinese accent, not one I've ever heard. She sounds like a Japanese girl who's pretending to be Chinese but somehow speaks with a Japanese accent, which is pretty much what's going on. At least the her singing'll be a marked improvement over West's. Hikaru's pretty much an excitable channelling of Tony Oliver's Rick Hunter, so that's mostly a wash. And looks like they got in some semi-swear words for "flavor". At any rate, I'm not one that thinks characters in a dub should sound exactly like the originals. In fact, most of the time it just won't "work" because different cultures often expects different voices for a particular face. Quality of acting and believability is much more important... and both here are slightly meh.

Not sure there's even any apology needed for the Glaug. It looks like a more angular, advanced, better armed version of the Regult, which is exactly what it's supposed to be. I suppose if there's any criticism of it, is that it's just a little too angular compared with the rest of the Zentradi designs and breaks away a little bit from the organic theme. Even so, to me, it's one of the most memorable designs around. Variable coneheads have nothing on it.

I personally dig Miyatake's work a whole lot more, and think he's a whole lot more consistent than Kawamori. Not only did he design one standout mecha in SDF Macross, he designed several: The Tomahawk Destroid (my favorite) The Mac II Monster (a close favorite) The other destroids with exception to the Spartan (created by Kawamori which also happens to be my least favorite) The Zentradi Ships The Glaug And of course, the Macross itself. He also seems to share design credit on the YF-21 and the Q-Rau, as far as I can tell from Miyatake Design Works. Seems he was responsible for the 21's cockpit. Yes, he was also responsible for some mediocre to horrible designs, like Battle 7 and the Protodevlin, but what can you do under the constraints of "lets make a silly show?" Now I'll give Kawamori major props for pulling off the Koenig Monster, having it transform into not one, but two additional modes, both of which look very good. It's designed completely opposite to how he normally works, starting from the alternate vehicle mode. On top of that, he had to start with an old design that had never meant to transform, never looked like it could be anything but a mobile artillery piece, and manage not only to munge in into a passable shuttle, but squeezed out a battroid mode out of nowhere as well. The Koenig, as silly as its premise is, is an absolute marvel of design. So all in all, my favorite of the Macross aesthetics is SDF by far, and Miyatake nearly designed the entire SDF world. Sure, the VF-1's its centerpiece, but I don't see myself repeatedly falling in love with nearly all of Kawamori's designs the way I do with Miyatake's.

Kawamori's incredible in his consistent ability to create transformable mecha that are sometimes radically different from each other... the man has amazing skills. But I haven't been a fan of most of his designs in the past decade. I still think the VF-1 the most elegant of designs, and most of his later stuff have the same themes going through them over and over, like cone heads, rounded out scoops and bevels, and bits reminscent of modern stealth aircraft. I'm not sure these elements work quite as well, and his change in style has even made him change the way he draws the VF-1. They're subtle changes, but his newer mechanical drawings just don't have that quality about them that made me fall in love with his old designs.

Oh, and Lewis never stopped being an advocate of science, logic, and critical thinking-- although I don't know how much of an advocate of science he start out being. What he stopped being, after finding faith, is a materialist (if he ever was truly that in the first place) and a philosophical atheist that assumes all material explanations for human behavior labelled 'scientific' must be true.

Actually, more properly, he's Protestant, and more specifically, he's Anglican. 'Christian' is a big label and encompuses both the Catholic and Protestant traditions, but Protestants and non-demoniational Christians tend to refer themselves primarily as Christians, while Catholics tend to refer to themselves as Catholics. So technically, both are 'Christian' from an academic point of view. However, they might disagree between themselves how much of each tradition is truly 'Christian', ie. accurately represents and understands that all men have erred and are sinful, that they need the forgiveness of a God who's just and must judge wrongdoing, that this same loving God offered Jesus-- His Son, God as Man-- to receive the punishment man deserved in their place, that He was raised from death through God the Spirit, and that a faith and trust in Christ and what He has done restores the relationship with God the Father. They might also disgree on the specifics of what it means to live a lifestyle that reflects this faith. There are also those that would consider themselves 'Christian', but disagree with one or more of these central beliefs, but they contrast with the consensus of mainstream Christianity and how Christianity has understood and defined itself through the ages. For what it's worth, Lewis was good friends with Tolkien, who was Catholic, but Tolkien could never manage to get Lewis to "convert" to Catholicism. Lewis did, however, hold certain beliefs that came closer to the Catholic understanding, differing from the views held by his Anglican and Protestant background. -Al

Okay, according to the Macross Compendium, it looks like the hatches are auxiliary launch hatches for when the Koenig is in shuttle mode, but they're part of the same system as the arm missile cannons, and they fire from the same payload. This explains why they appear to line up with the first missile cannon's tube. And according to the compendium, the arm missile launchers can actually extend while in shuttle mode in order to make all six launcher barrels available, if need be.

There's also a funny anecdote that Smith gives about Peters when he tells Smith, "See, you and I know how it's like. We're from the streets." Smith responds, "Uh, no we aren't. You were a hairdresser once, and I grew up in the suburbs."

I'd seen Runaway posters at a local video store as a kid long, long ago, and distinctly remembered the robot spiders and a cop (Seleck) with a big gun. For some reason, I got it confused with Bladerunner, also featuring a similar looking cop (Harrison Ford) with big gun. So I downloaded Bladerunner and watched it, hoping for robot spiders. Sadly, no spiders. What's even weirder is that Spielberg had originally approached Seleck to play Indiana Jones.

My wallet silently cries.

Is it documented somewhere? Cause it just doesn't seem like the missle launchers really "fit" in with the rest of the design, but I'd never considered that they would be useful as defense in shuttle mode. It just seemed silly for such a huge mecha to be protected by a couple of single missle launchers, but then again, they'd be pretty big missiles. Are the arm cannons a beam cannon of some sort? Cause if they are, that pretty much blows away my theory.

I finally figured out what the missile matches on the Yamato Koenig's arms are supposed to be... I'd always thought they were some sort of single missile launcher, but the design just looked weird and wacky with the missle on the Yamato toy sort of just suspended and attached to the missle hatch. Not to mention the strangeness of concealed single missile launchers on a gigantic destroid bristling with guns. But turns out that they not actually missile launchers-- they're actually supposed to be ammo loading ports for the arm cannons/launchers! When you close the hatch, the missile/shell actually lines up with the tube that forms the top most barrel on the arm, and it looks as if the missile/shell could travel down the length of the barrel as part of the arm launcher's firing or loading operation. I think it's supposed to be a detail that showed how the arm guns worked, and how the ammo's loaded, but too bad Yamato sort of abandoned the feature, and just decided to slather glue on the hinges of half of the toys produced. If everyone's already figured out what these hatches were, then just smack me. I've just now figured out what they were actually supposed to do. -Al

Okay, so I finally got my Monster in the mail, and I'm both impressed and slightly annoyed at some aspects of its design-- the usual, weak pegs, holes in the arm that look like they could break easily, etc. I took apart the arm to loosen the screws that holds the arm missle hatches, because someone had suggested doing that to make it easier for the hatches to open. It worked on one arm, and I saw that part of one end of the hatch joint was glued down but not in a way that impeded movement, and when I started working on the other arm, it looked like the entire joint was slathered with glue, making it impossible for the joint to move and the hatch to open fully. I had thought that the second reissue's missile covers weren't glued down, but apparently, mine are. So, anyone know how you can whether the one you've got is a re-issue or whether it was the original run? And is there an easy way to remove the glue without damaging the plastic, or are they using the sort of glue that basically melts and fuses plastic together? I've also got a massive case of loose arm joints, and they won't even hold up by themselves. Is this relatively normal? -Al

Might be down for three of these... are we out of luck if we're still wanting hollow 1S lasers?

I'm thinking of getting a closer-to-lineart 1D head by modding a pair of 1S lasers, clipping off one of the lasers and maybe shifting the other laser closer to the stripes on the disc. This way, the head laser disks would be a lot bigger than the Cap's rendition (which is by no means shabby), just like how it looks in the animation and line art. Fulcy, would you be interested in doing something crazy like that? -Al

Yep. I'm missing the RIO console on my pigmented kit, like the Cap suspected. One of the back antenna fins also happened to break off, presumably in shipping... so, a total noobie question. What sort of glue should I be using on this sort of resin?

And then we can get Aston Kutcher for Carnage, Laura Prepton as Dunst's replacement when she quits, and Wilmer Valderrama as... well, FES of course, or maybe Mysterio if we put a fish bowl on his head.... and we'd pretty much have almost the whole gang.

Meh to the CG. Not because it's especially bad, but just because I'm not a fan of CG mechanicals that aren't cel shaded mixed with cell art unless it's especially well done. The shading on the ships and alpha look like something out of a video game. And bugs me why they couldn't have stuck more closely Mospaeda's style. The character animation isn't too bad though.