VFTF1

Well, technically you shouldn't get sued unless there was more than just name and genre resemblence. That is to say - IF you Harrry Pottter story was drastically different from Hary Potter. I mean - it's the same reason why Hasbro can't sue the people who made Gobots cartoons, or why anime with transforming super robot mecha can't generally sue eachother even though - let's be frank - it's all pretty much the same. I mean - to a lay person- beyond the name and specific designs -what is the big difference between Glendizer, Getter Robo, Gurren Lagann, Optimus Prime and any other big red robot with vaguely horn like things on its' head that turns into something and generally runs around the cosmos doing stuff? Of course, they ARE different - very different stories. And so could a story about Harrry Pootteeerr and Harry Potter. The thing is - the name would be similar enough that you might have to defend yourself. But if the story were very VERY different - you could probably get away with it. You might have to justify the name though - but one way to do it would be to have everybody else in the story have names like that. So, you'd have JOOOhhhn and BoooB and pEEEEEttteeer and Riiiccchhhhaaard. Why? Well - you could explain it to be because they all live in a world where there is a constant echo - so that is how they hear their names. After all - why do we "hear" HARRY as HARRY and not "HAAARRRYY" - well - because of the physical construction of the the universe and our biological construction and the specifics of physics on earth and where we usually are listening to sounds. But if we all lived in echo prone caves and never came into close contact with one another and only communicated by calling out to one another in under ground caves - then all we'd hear would be HAAARRRYY etc. And therefore we'd write the names as we hear them - thus HAAARY etc. And if this was your story - then you'd probably have a case for your trademark. They COULD ask you why the name wasn't say JEEEEBBB SMMIIITH - but really - there's no way I think that they could trade mark the sound...I dunno.. But the real problem would be finding a publisher willing to go through with it. And I'm not even talking about willing to publish your wizard story - I'm talking about willing to go through the hassel of winning a court case on the HAARRY Poottteeer subject. More likely the publisher would say "this could delay publication and cost tons of money. So either justify to me that keeping the name HARRY Poootteer is going to make a couple million dollars difference during sales or change the name." You COULD vageuly argue that the similarity to Harry Potter would make the difference - but you might also argue that it would damage your book because people will not buy it thinking it's a crappy bootleg/rip off and missing out on the great story you've weaved. It could work either way. Point is... Wait - what thread am I in? Pete

I... cannot argue with that. You're right. I guess I can chalk it up to a Yoko licking fantasy dream... But that brings me to another point... she looks somehow...I dunno...like...not erotic...she looks more playful and giddy than she does erotic... It's like somebody said "hey - let's make a practical joke - lick this gun muzzle" ... and she thought it was all funny... I dunno... it's not like the 1/5 yoko where she's doing an everyday thing (fixing her hair) and manages to just look sexy doing it... Here there's too much effort... Although... you do raise a point...namely...the extent to which reason often tells us what is impossible and therefore serves the anti-spirals rather than showing us the infinity of possibilities... Maybe I need to learn to love this statue? Pete

Cool. We await your impression with bated breath Hopefully when I get up tomorrow, you'll have some interesting stuff written up. Bomba! Pete

...There also doesn't seem to be a zipper on those unzipping boots, whereas other statues and the animation model has a zipper... Pete being a bit of a spoil sport...I know...

I'd sooner die than retire. I have plent free time as is and have set up my life in such a way that I'll never get rich in the sense of having lots of pieces of paper with dead people on them or lots of digits next to my name in a bank's computer - but what I will have is what I do have: no boss, no hassel, no stress, no need to get up in the morning and be somewhere at 9 am, fresh air, a good loyal dog and a woman who loves me from time to time depending on her mood. And of course my Yamato collection, Gundams, SOCs, statues etc etc - but that's a given. However - on all the other stuff - particularly this: I like this point of view. I like this opinion. It's calm, it's hopeful and it's not full of melodrama. Maybe it's because I'm high on a number of pills and medication right now - but I totally agree with you. And I'm curios to see what they come up with. I'd certainly support a new series with the movie atmosphere. As long as gritty doesn't become KEWLVIOLENCE!! then it's fine. I would also love a toy line that doesn't suck. But yeah - let's hope you're right Pete

My only real contribution here can be to note for posterity that I am amazed at how I came around to liking the DX after being initially unforgiving of its' many chunky faults. I stand by this opinion and am a happier possesor of all the DXs released to date, and am also looking forward to the DX lucifer. I do agree that the model is fantastic, having built Ozma myself and I do indeed cherish him. But the delicacy is just too great to offer the play value of the DX, and the DX is in no way really inferior in any mode. I'm sure improvements can be made, and I imagine that if Bandai comes out with a version 2.0 DX, like Yamato did with the 1/60, then I might be inclined to chuck my old ones for the new ones - but as things stand I am most satisfied with them. Pete who talks in very high-minded tones when he's sick, because ilnness is like a step from death and he thinks dying people need to talk melodramatically I guess...

Re: sexism - Well, I am a sexist, if by that you mean that I generally do discern a distinction between men and women and act discrimnatorily towards them on the basis of sex. Here are some examples of how I've discriminated on the basis of sex over the years: 1. I turned down a gay guy who was hitting on me in a bar because, as I told him, I prefer women and don't sleep with men - independent of his merits as a sexual partner, I judged him solely on the basis of his being a guy and not on the basis of whether or not he was up to the task. 2. I turned down a very nice girl who was extremely intelligent and certainly beautiful in her own way for another girl who was far less intellectual, but far more feiminine (and I prefer to love women who are more feminine to women who are more intellectual) and had a happy relationship with this less intellectual but more feminine girl for 5 years and we are still good friends at the very least. 3. I have not paid men for sex and feel that they don't even deserve minimum wage from me for it. I dunno - I could go on. But my point is - when you decide to befriend someone, it is usually to the exclussion of other people. When you decide to get married or go on a date, you are excluding others. You are excluding them because the people you DO chose to spend your time with have qualities that you find preferable to other options. Naturally, you can always change your opinion and reverse yourself. But the point is - we all discriminate every single day, whether in choosing one restaurant over another, one toy over another or one woman (or man) over another. That the word "discriminate" has become a dirty word is just a testamony to the collapse of any sensible understanding of the english language and the introduction of Orwellian doublethink that is meant to destroy the language, make certain words IMMEDIATELY bring to mind certain politically incorrect behaviors - and therefore make sure that NONE OF US ever have ANY TIME to even THINK about the concepts and ideas hidden behind those words. There's nothing wrong with discriminating and every person does it and in fact has a right to do it. Now, there are some situations where we might opine that discriminating is unfair. For example - if a beautiful well cared for intelligent and successful woman approached you from the right, and a flabby girl with buck teeth and hair on her neck approached you from the left, and both asked you to go on a date - please tell me whether physical attraction would play ANY part in your decision? Perhaps the flabby girl with buck teeth and hair on her neck is a brilliant erudite young woman, well versed in five languages, tender, kind and inspirational - but still these qualities MIGHT not be EVERYTHING you're looking for in a girl to the exlusion of all else. Naturally, it is all very sad. But we also tend to forget that WOMEN judge men in much the same way, and are actually often far less queesy about being sexist. Try to pick up a random beautiful girl by impressing her with the scope of your Yamato collection, your photographic knowledge of Shakespeare and your general good cheer. Then try to pick up a random beautiful girl by taking her to an expensive restaurant, taking her to a trendy disco, taking her shopping or - better yet - BUYING her a nice dress or other fashionable stuff - and see which one of these possibly attracts the girl faster? Of course individual tastes vary, and one must never generalize - so it is possible to find a woman who will love you as you are - in fact, it's advisable to do so. Happily for both sexes - there is not ONLY ONE MAN or ONLY ONE WOMAN in the universe who might fall in love with you and most of us have the happy chance to choose from a pool of possibilities where there are no extremes such as the ones I presented above but instead where we can be particular having first come to a general understanding of the "type" of girl (or guy, if we are girls) that we are looking for. Of course, let me end by saying that the most extremist "sexists" that I know are - naturally if you think about it - all gay. Gay men, in my experience, are similar to heterosexual men in one respect: they hunger for sex. However, since heterosexual women, on the whole, do not hunger for sex to the same passionate extent as men, or, if they do, it is also balanced with a hunger for security, delicate love and companionship - so the heterosexual man MUST at least PRETEND to be delicate, loving, compassionate and friendly. And naturally, if you DO something long enough, then eventually you actually learn how accept it and in a way, you come to enjoy it - especially if the reward for it is the company of the beautiful woman that you compelled gentlemenly virtues upon yourself in order to get. That said - gay men usually do not have this same challenge, since their prospective partners are equally hungry for immediate sexual gratification and there is no need to really impress prospective lovers with anything else beyond the fact that you have somewhere to take them and would like to do something to them. I do not mean by this to suggest that homosexuals are incapable of a deeper love and friendship, but merely to state that given how the sexual desire is greater in men than in women, then obviously there is less dilly-dalying about the matter between two men than between a man and a woman - in general. Then again - thanks to our friends, the enemies of sexism who wish all sexes to be equal - women have of late become more and more like men, loosing their tenderness and delicacy and replacing it with the cold, calculating cruel boorishness of men, and men have become lost in this jungle where it seems that it's ok to be ANY sexual type EXCEPT a heterosexual man. ALL deviancies from heterosexuality are presented as interesting, compelling and worthy of study and attention - while heterosexuality is so normal that it is boring and immediately associated with something dry. Romanticism is of course not popular any more because it is considered merely an outstretching of social conventions that somehow cement patriarchy and keep women down. Thankfully, I live in a backwards country where, even more thankfully, women were for 50 years deprived the chance of being women in the fullest sense of the term, and are therefore not only eager to indulge themselves in conventionally feminist tasks such as getting careers, being financially independent etc etc (which are fine, since every person is free to pursue these things), but happily are also very excited - or at least have been for the past 20 years - about being sexy and attractive and tend to keep their weight down, their breasts firm, their legs smooth, their hair elegent and their clothing fashionable. Of course, it is their right to, starting tomorrow, grow beards, develop potbellies, swagger, and burp at meals if they so wished. Happily, I find that women do not wish to do that and instead are most content to remain women - who - just to close with a sexist remark are, in my opinion the superior sex, which is why I delight in trying to spend so much time with them. Pete on topic note: That SDF-1 for 2000 bucks sure is expensive! darn you Yamato!

Well...I have to try to save myself here First - I'm not by any stretch of the imagination arguing that this is a poorly done figure. On the contrary - unlike "realistic" Yoko, this one strikes me as being very well done, an excellent and playful representation. That said - a statue, since it is in a fixed pose, ought - in my opinion - to try to capture the spirit of the character in any fixed pose it takes. I just don't really remember Yoko as being the licking type. She didn't have any over phallophilic tendencies in the show beyond a natural heterosexual attraction to Kamina. And while one can argue that there was clearly an esoteric phallic symbolism in her wielding of a big gun - it was always esoteric and it was equally an attempt at underscoring her "manliness" as it was an attempt at putting a beautiful girl together with a phallic symbol (for proof, notice the little gun she gave Kamina, to underscore how "little" of a man he was in terms of firearms, and also notice how happy Kamina is when Yoko lets him use the big gun, and he manages to shoot a bird with it). Anyways - the point is... I just doesn't see Yoko doing what this statue depicts. WHY would she be licking her gun? In fact, they might as well just do an al out pornographic statue with her licking something else - THAT I could see her doing. But her gun? No. Second of all - I'm not quite certain as to whether the statue is an artistic vision or whether she has actually dissassembled her gun and is holding what I might mistakenly be calling the muzzle? In any case - the tip of the gun? Now...where is the other end? The muzzle is very VERY loooong. But she seems to be holding only the upper 1/3 of it. So... what happened to the rest? I would be more thrilled at this statue if it were a bit more imaginative - for instance - "Arctic Yoko." Have her dressed up in sexy winter apparel and have her surprised to find that her tongue is stuck to the frozen gun muzzle. That would be funny and sexy. As such - this statue confuses me. Finally - perhaps if I were a Yoko statue completist, then none of this would bother me, but given the bad economy and the cost of such things, since I have decided to purchase Yoko statues, I am distriminating. I have two statues thus far and if I do get a third one - I'd like to get "space Yoko" .... sadly I can't find a link to the space Yoko statue. She's a big more pronounced in terms of her ass and her breasts in that one, no doubt due to her having aged. But this in no way detracts, in my view, from her desirability. anyways... failing comes naturally to me Pete

More Moaning and Groaning from Me [only this time, it's mixed in with a bad case of the flu ..] So...somewhere between consciousness , semi-consciousness and another bout of coughing in the middle of the night, a thought struck me. Here goes: Question: How is it that I was able to remain a Transformers fan for so many years even though there were times when the latest series or toys weren't exactly what I was hoping for and what suddenly changed this year? Was it just that I finally snapped, that I realized my hopes would never be fulfilled? That can't be it, because I methodically collected EVERY Transformer from ALL the series - even the ones that I didn't particularly like - and was able to do this happily. So what happened? Strangely - the answer is...the Live Action Movie happened. No - not the designs or the toys or Michael Bay. Worse - the live action movie effectively blew away everything that came before it. There IS NO WAY to tie the live action movie in with all the other Transformers series because for all intents and purposes - Optimus Prime in the live action movie "IS" G1 Prime. It's not Optimus Prime from an alternative time line, it's not Optimus Prime from a different dimmension. It's not one of many Optimus Primes in one of many universes in the "Transformers Multi-verse" that Unicron is trying to gobble up, where Unicron is the only constant who traverses the various dimmensions. No. It is THE Optimus Prime. And there is no multiverse. It's a pure start-from-scratch movie that, while paying homage to what came before through designs, names, dialogue, characters and situations, is ultimately not just "it's own story" - it's THE story. It forces you to chose 25 years of history or two hours of film making and leaves no room for compromise. It tells you that your huge Transformers collection is just a pile of randomly accumulated crap that has nothing to do with 'real' Transformers, which are just now beginning. And think about it. When Beast Wars came out, love it or hate it, it left G1 untouched. BM might have made us sore because Cybertron was turned into the Discovery World Channel at the end - but that was also in the far faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar distant future - and what with time travel, worm holes and the like - it was forgivable. Armada was horrible crap, but Simon Furman cleaned up that mess by explaining in Worlds Collide that there were multiple dimmensions of idiocy, and this was just one of them, so if you didn't like it, just ignore it and stay in the dimension you DID like. And I found myself able to then stay in the dimension I did like (G1) and incorporate elements, and characters and themes from the idiotic dimmensions to suit my purposes. But there came a point where everything began to break down. First was actually Animated. The design change was so drastic, the 'kiddification' so complete that it was really hard to have toys from the Transformers Animated line on the same shelf as the others. I mean - up till then, you could put, say, G1 Sideswipe next to, say, Car Robots Machalert and it would be ok. You could certainly mix up the Unicron Trilogy line with Beast Wars. You could play with them together. But Animated? They were just too drastically different - in both modes. The vehicles were too cartoony. Sure, you could argue that, say, Cybertron sucked because all the vehicles were "futuristic" and that's a cop out since it's easier to design a futuristic car that turns into a robot rather than try to make a real car (which was never intended to transform) hide a robot form. But at least it was still plausible to put them side by side and just say "one is from the future." Animal Transformers also - I personally prefered the "vannila" BW - the realistic animals... but I understood the appeal of mechanical animals as well.. It was always possible to mix everything up and that was fun. But Animated was impossible to keep on the same shelf. Impossible to feature in the same plot line. And then the Movie...the Movie...ist just blew everything away. It was like... the movie was just...it just basically made it pointless to have toys from, say, 1985. It's like - it made me feel old It made me feel like I was watching something that was based on stuff that didn't exist anymore and could therefore take a free reign. And maybe this is why ROTF Devastator pissed me off so much. Fine. He didn't have to look like G1 Devastator. He could look like a ten ton gorrilla with bunny ears. But for Christs' sake - make the colors a menacing dirty grayish orange tinge. Or alter something so that it doesn't look so f-ing bad and ridiculous. Hm...I'm trailing away from a coherent argument... Anyways - it's just too much. Too fast. I'm sitting here now, during my illness, reading Assimov's Elijah Baley/R Daneel books - I like how the novels follow eachother...even though sometimes there's a 30 year gap between when Asimov wrote one and when he wrote the next one. And you know what? The entertainment industry USED TO LOOK LIKE THAT. I mean - Marvel comics numbered into the 300s didn't they? Or more. I mean - when I was a kid in the 1980s, do you think that I went into a comic shop and picked up Spiderman #1 ever year? Hell no! (Now I'm finding the logic of my argument - bear with me) When I was a kid - I went int to the comic shop and I would see Spiderman #400-something or other (a big number anyways!) And yeah, there were sometimes more than one title for the popular comics - to keep it on Spidey, I remember there was the Amazing Spiderman, and then there was also Peter Parker the something or other...I forgot now because I was never that into Spiderman in particular...but look - my point it - WE DID NOT GET YEARLY RE-BOOTS OF POPULAR MEDIA. You could TELL that the Marvel comics stories had been going for years, DECADES even - and that if you were a kid coming into it for the first time, the producers at Mavel didn't think "man - we have to reboot the franchise once a year because little kids will never understand what it's all about." Bull! And hell - I didn't even have the internet back then! It's not like I could go on line to find back-issues on ebay or read about it on Wiki. No! I had to go off of two-sentence editors' notes that followed an asterix or the occasional re-telling of previous tales. Sometimes there were graphic novels or paperbacks - and of course then there was the best sensation - ACCIDENTALLY stumbling on stuff at comic stores. Yet despite all of these informational gaps - I had NO TROUBLE getting to like these comic books and getting into the franchises. Today - kids have all the information at their finger tips yet they are treated like ignoramuses. It is presumed they won't go back to watch last year's series on Youtube, so we need to construct a TOTALLY NEW ONE for this year. It is also presumed that the attention span of your target audience will be roughly 5 months - or so it seems. It's horrible! And the result is fandoms full of ignoramuses who have no clue about the history of a franchise and don't know how to find it, and franchises which are nothing more than cheap reboots every year instead of epic stories that have been nurses and drawn out for decades. The only salvation is themed websites - like MW for example - which sticks to enjoying a certain fandom. But of course - if Kawamori suddenly rebooted Macross, retold the story from scratch, and not in the way of DYRL vs. SDFM TV - but the way that, say Armada "retells" G1 (insofar as they introduce big transforming robots, there is Prime and Megatron and they are on Earth) - then I'm sure our heads will explode in furious rage too. In any event - now that Hasbro has the movie - they damn well better do a better job of taking care of it or it's just going to become like the blasted Batman movies. Does anybody remembered the old Batman movies? Like other than the Jack Nicholson one? Does anybody care? I would prefer a thousand times for a franchise I love to just STOP rather than have it continue needlessly. Better to make new things than screw old things up. Cough-hack hack well...there's my latest rant on Transformers...I wonder where it will lead me... it kind of depends on what Hasbro/Takara-Tomy have just around the corner. Better be something good! Pete

I know that not living in the United States biases my perspective heavily insofar as I have no personal emotional stake in whether or not I can turn on Cartoon Network or whatever other US tv program and see MF --- but personally I really don't see the big deal. HG is operating in a medium that is going to die just like newspapers are going to die. Everything is on the internet and will be on the internet. Television will eventually make the jump to the internet too. There will be no television sets, or at the very least there will no longer be stations which run programming by THEIR schedule - but rather they will offer a variety of shows that you can watch at YOUR liesure. I'm content with having it all on the internet and whenever I read articles dealing with the dinosaur media - television stations, licensing agreements, newspapers - I think: this stuff is still around? This stuff still matters? Before I die - it will end and we will have an age where nobody even remembers these silly disputes because ultimately they will stop being in any way PROFITABLE. And as soon as television stops being profitable (print newspapers are already unprofitable and exist only because desperate governments do various things to keep them alive beyond their time - example is France which openly subsidizes print newspapers [of course only the "mainstream" ones), the dispute over licensing will cease to matter. Once there is ZERO money to be made from having a license or not having one, you will suddenly find nobody cares much who has what license and the black market will simply become the norm - that is to say we will have numerous translations, numerous subs, maybe some dubs by zealous people as well - there will be VARIOUS ways to enjoy a given show - not just the corporately mandated way. And the main money that will be made will be through tangible merchandising - and these shows are more and more being tied to that than anything else. So, I'm not overly emotional about it one way or another. The old media are zombies. They will collapse. All of it will be whiped out and we will live in a new age without restrictions on the transfer of information and the enjoyment of entertainment programming. Pete

I'm gonna pass. Why would Yoko lick the muzzle of her gun? Has she dissasembled it? In any case, I can't really find a logical basis in her sexiness beyond someone saying "let's have her lick this gun muzzle." Not like the 1/5 Yoko which has a logical basis - namely she's fixing her hair (I can imagine she actually does that, while I find it hard to concieve of her licking her gun's muzzle). As for the ass crack - it's on the 1/5, and as soon as I have the 1/8 Yoko Litner sniper statue in hand I'll also know if it's there. Anyways....I'd sooner want to get the Space-suit Yoko to this one. Although I do think the jacket is sexy. Pete

Off the top of my head, I'd stock it with women Like that one street in Amsterdam where you get to go window shopping in new and interesting ways Um...speaking of which... They need to reissue the KISS player line. That had potential. Pete (has a high temperature and therefore will likely sound less coherent than usual)

The truth of the matter is that due to the impeding Robotech Live Action movie, they decided they didn't have time to work on all the special FX that were going to be needed on the whole Rambo sci-fi and instead to do a sraight up action movie in a Mexican town with guns and women and hopefully get it into theatres before Robotech LAM crowds everything out and takes all the profits. Pete

Episode 2 And from the gutt wrenching pain of half-consciousness rises VFTF1, drugged out on pills that had him hallucinating geometrical shapes all night long, coughing up a storm and generally feeling like the life is slipping from his weary, desolate form during the whithering hours of a grey, listless, uneventful winter, harsh in its' compulsive desire to press the idea of infinite hopelessness against you sick, decrepit body.. uh... Anyways - thanks for writing up the review Gubaba. I remembered yesterday that it was "time" but just couldn't get out of bed to do it... Today, I'm feeling a bit better (for now), and was very happy that you took the time to keep this thread on schedule. Thank you. I shall now proceed to comment here: 1. The straws and the Lemonade Although you paint Basara as annoying in your review for being somewhat oblivious towards Mylene's questions and giving one word answers to them, I think you miss out on a couple of things in this scene by defering too much to the stereotype. First of all - I got the feeling that Bassara was oblivious to Mylene's questions because Mylene didn't really care about the answers. That is to say; she didn't come specifically to ask those questions; she came to seek out Ray's help in elluding her mom. I think her curiosity was cursory at best, and perhaps Basara detected this and was therefore not too intent on answering her. Which brings up another question - to what extent, assuming that Mylene asks the questions the audience wants asked- do we really want answers to those questions ourselves? That is to say - wouldn't it be more appropriate to sing? I guess what I'm getting at is that for Bassara, song is a universal form of communication. He's not inclined to sit down and have a long discussion on the subject when he can just sing. MORE - IF people NEED to ask the question, then this tells Bassara that his songs are not yet getting through to people. So, is it any wonder that, whenever Bassara gets bombarded by questions like these, he concentrates EVEN MORE on his music? It's not that he's ignoring the questioner. He's accutely, I would even say painfully aware, of those questions and of the fact that they represent his failure. As to the straws - well...they certainly mean SOMETHING. And their mystery - in my mind - just adds another layer to Bassara's personality. Maybe he made those shapes himself, while deep in thought, working on lyrics and sipping lemonade? Maybe he does have lots of groupies come over and jam with him? Who knows? In any event - little things like that reveal personality and character. Bassara is not a robot. He's not Terminator, living alone in a dingy apartment, functioning only to produce a sound that will get through to people. He has visitors. He has places t go, people to see. It's just that we don't get to see them - we just get hints of it, like with the straws. I actually have to go back and watch this episode again before commenting more on it... it's been a while...besides, my brain feels like scrambled eggs and I can't breathe. But other than that..BOMBA! ... I'll be back with more on episode 2 as soon as I've watched it again...again And thanks again Gubaba for your review. I'm unfortunately probably going to be more incoherent than usual until my illness passes... Pete

Just to show how much of an old man I am...permit me to sing a song... Let's hear it for the boy! Let's give the boy a ha-a-a-aa-nd! Let's hear if for my baby! um.. Something about taking a stand... Which makes me think of Dare...Dare ot believe you can survive Dare to be all that you can be... Dare to believe you will survive ... Oh... I really shouldn't mix vodka with medicine... As for Kamjin...he was ok...but I never really had much patience for his stubborn headedness. I think Macross Frontier treated that character archetype much MUCH better - which is to say for only about 15 minutes. Pete

Yeah well... I'm wondering whether I didn't forget to put some ankle gaurds on him But I do indeed love him... Pete

I know. But in life, all of us need something to rip on. I found Robotech and Transformer handy targets of late Pete

Uuuu....mixing vodka...with aspring....asprin...when what I really need is one of those damn inhaler things that shoots a burst of medication straight into the lungs...um...if you thought I was harsh on Robotech when I was healthy...now that I'm suffering this wretched cold, flu, bronchitus...whatever...although I don't have a temperature (I think, though I haven't measured)...umm... I'm going to be doubly harsh. 1. Doug Bendo With all due respect but there's a big difference between being dislexic and being illiterate. If he's dislexic - fine. That is not his fault. But if he's "functionally illiterate" then they guy could do to learn to read. This isn't just a matter of doing himself a general favor in life - but specifically... if you're going to sit on the internet and quarrel with people about Robotech/Macross - it sometimes might help to be able to READ what they write. I mean, I guess other people can do it for him - but in general... for those who might have been inclined to debate him via the written word - to find out that he's not going to be able to read your stuff one way or another...GREAT. Wonderful. That goes a long way to explaining why Doug Bendo has the opinions he has: because he's NEVER READ ANY COUNTER OPINIONS. It also, IMO, explains why someone like him would instinctively prefer Robotech (dubs) to Macross (all subbed). If you can't READ the subs, then no matter how many Gubabas there are on the internet telling you Macross is better - you won't know it. That said - what the Macross fandom needs to do is put together a computer Narrator that will narrate over the dialogue from the Macross series and send it to this guy. Wait. I'm sick. I'm supposed to be pissed. And here I am being naive and warm and fuzzy... Screw it! They do it to themselves. ROBOTECH: 1. A Hastily Put Together Bootleg of three unrelated anime 2. Legal Threats to Legitamite Business enterprises 3. Crap Toys 4. Censoring people who know too much about anime, Macross and Robotech in general 5. Making a Functional Illiterate a Sage of the Robotech Fandom 6. MAKING A GUY WHO RITS LAYK DIS MOD!LOL!! 7. Add your own other six zillion reasons It's depressing. It's depressing because you really want to think there's a larger issue in all of this beyond "they're dumb and we're knowledgable." You want to think that there's something better about Robotech and that there's some kind of significant debate going on here - like a real issue where it's plausible to see two sides... But instead, all I see are, on the Macross side, people who tirelessly give reasoned arguments, and onthe Robotech side I SEES DIS and I see people who apparently won't even read all the reasoned arguments because they CAN'T. This sucks! It's an embarassment ot Macross that these guys have anything to do with the same anime. It just goes to show that Macross and Robotech really do need to once and for all go their seperate ways. there's never going to be a resolution to this. It's all hopeless. Life sucks. Pete

simple logical rules to follow in thinking about this subject: 1) Movies that come out over the next few weeks,months and years are all rushed into production in the hopes of capturing any kind of market share they can get out of FEAR of being steam rolled once Robotech comes out - since Robotech will be so popular, that no other movies will be showing in theatres and people will just keep going to the cinema to watch it again and again. 2) Movies that fail to come out, fail to make it out of production etc have all failed because people just learned that Robotech is coming soon to the cinema, and they figured "we can't compete with that" and just stopped trying. Obviously. Pete

150 minutes? Too short! It should run for AT LEAST one million years. But I guess anything is better than nothing. Can't wait for this movie to come out! Pete

Given how worthless the US Dollar is nowadays, I'd take the Good'N'Pleny. Pete

Hm. You're right about the villain... but let's leave flower girl alone. I think that instead, the villain could be the panty-snatcher. Hm. Ok - on second thought. It could be the flower girl. She snatches Sheryl's panties and tries to auction them off on ebay? No. Hm.. Hmmmm.... In any event the panties need to be in the story. Pete

Ditto. Although I am sad it has come to this. I mean - seriously - what we are now living through is the pinacle of Transformers popularity in our life times. It's what we as fans supposedly always dreamed of. Thousand of toys, a live action movie with Peter Cullen doing the voice acting.... comics galore... On the surface - it's all hunky dory... But beneath the surface - there's a sense of accute betrayal...or...irrelevence... it's like everything I grew up with is gone and never will come back and the stuff that gets churned out just doesn't have that same magic. Worse still - it's sub par compared to other anime out there... But I think I'm gonna keep on bitching for now. Most MW members do this in the "Yamato you whores! I voluntarily gave you thousands of dollars for your crappy valks now give me more!" threads... I guess I vent here Pete

Yeah, it's me again. Got the particle beam rifle and the shield done today... I also love the mace, but I'm a bit sick and so shouldn't model too much for fear of botching things...anyways...really love Gundam. I love how those hydraulics are visible as his ankles, and I like how everything is so smooth and seemless. It really makes you appreciate the design all that much more when the model does not have to be fudged, changed, "updated" or modified because the design was "unrealistic." This model does an excellent job of showing just how realistic the original design was. The legs in particular are - like legs in all future Gundams - real works of art. But since this is the first Gundam, then the legs get special recognition here. I'm so happy to finally have Gundam in my collection...2 years after starting to build kits! Bout time Pete

Re: people who ostensibly love anime, watch anime, sometimes even know Japanese, and suddenly fail this test or don't know what hiki-whatever-the-fcuk means: Here's my theory - and as usual it's totally based on personal experience, gutt instinct and a healthy dose of vodka (had my first shot in three months today! the excuse? Bronchitus - nothing like a shot glass full of pepper mixed with vodka to get that out of your system). Anyways - look at 4chan. I never have, but people here often complain about it. I get the feeling that only part of the reason people don't like it is because of the open-format chaos. The other part of the reason is the unmoderated idiocy; by which I mean people going back and forth over things which shouldn't deserve an argument because they're questions of fact rather than interpretation. Another way of putting it - imagine if we didn't have a Newbie thread and ALL of those questions from the newbie thread were threads of their own. The forum would be a mess - but more importantly - the heads of noobies would also be a mess. When I came to MW, I was a noobie. Part of what helped me get up to speed was how well organized the forum was in terms of locating solid information. It's important to learn what a person DOESN'T KNOW and needs to catch up on. Now ...where am I going with this? Well - I think there's a whole sub-set of the anime otaku world - perhaps not in Japan, but certainly in the west/Europe/America etc who are ostensibly interested in anime etc....but not really. That is to say - they have a passing interest. They don't collect because that would actually require them to have jobs and make money. So they sometimes get one or two anime related do-das, often times bootlegged do-das at that. They do like free things like downloads - but not necessarily anime itself - with subtitles - because that requires an attention span beyond that of a three year old to watch, read, think about, understand etc. Sam with manga, which for the most part is in Japanese. So what exactly DO they enjoy? Beats me - oh - wait - now I know. They enjoy games like the above. Throwing some random colors together and guessing what random color splatter represents an anime. I dunno. I don't mean to come off like a huffy elitist or anything... but I find it silly that someone's dedication to anime can be inferred on the basis of whether or not they realize that random color bars are actually representative of anime they should know. Grumble grumble.. Pete