VFTF1

Memo would do himself a favor if he: a) Stuck around longer to talk instead of showing up, CAPS LOCKING some random arguments and links and then going away and b) At least tried to demonstrate that he understands the counter-arguments being made instead of being oblivious to them, as if all we needed were those links he provided and the quotes and that's it. I have nothing against people thinking he's a troll, doubting that he'll actually communicate rather than preach etc etc. I just think that we should all keep our cool when he shows up. Not saying anybody did anything wrong, but there was just a point in the debate where I got the feeling that some peoples' frustrations - even if legit ones - were starting to drive them towards anger - and that never produces anything good. The last thing we want is for Memo's appearances to cause any kind of disturbance that would get this thread locked or get the mods mad.. and you know how those things can degenerate into flame wars pretty quickly. Again - I am not saying Memo is not to blame here. I mean - he doesn't really even have the courtesy to stick around and just shoot the wind with us like any normal person would. Nor does he explain why the caps locks, nor does he reply to Seto's counter points - nothing. Agreed. But you can't ban him for being dense or stubborn. It's one of those situations like in Terminator 2. Naked Arnold comes into the bar, walks around showing off his shlong, and tells some dude to give him his clothes and his bike. Don't be the dude who puts his cigar out on arnold. That never works - it just leaves us with a bar that is trashed - and we like this bar, we like to hang out in it, and we should be careful not to let guys like Memo trash it. Again - not saying anybody was out of line or anything - but I just got the feeling tempers were running a bit and I would really be sorry to see any fights or impoliteness here that would be harmful to us all. But overall, I think the situation was handled well by everybody - everybody except Memo, of course, who didn't answer any questions, didn't acknowledge anybody, said his bit - and then split. But oh well. Pete

I've never heard of him - so that alone probably means he is a huge bestseller. I'm generally pretty clueless in terms of what people over here like :-) Yeah, I know. But I was making a vain attempt at humor ... besides, I can't think of Octopusses without immediately thinking of James Bond. Pete

Hm, I dunno...I've been thinking about this lately....and ...(not surprisingly for me)...have come to the conclusion that G1 should just be left alone at reissues. Every attempt at making a G1-like bot has fallen short in some respect, at least for me. To the point where it's like...what's the point? I dunno. I guess part of the problem is that there is no such thing as 'G1 acurate' - at least not for me, insofar as the comics had different art styles and therefore different interpretations of the characters anyways. But all of those interpretations were based off of the toy design - and part of what made Transformers fun was using your imagination...thanks to imagination, that blocky bot never seemed blocky, but instead came alive. And part of the fun was that there were just so many of them with various personalities... I dunno... they'll never reproduce new versions of ALL of the characters we love. So I just give up on waiting. Prefer to just collect G1 and that's that... Lazy me. Pete

Poland is one of the countries that Amazon does not ship to. Next time I go to Berlin, I'll have to first look around for a place where I might be able to score it. Girlfriend wants to go to Amsterdam - maybe I can find it there to. The only thing Poland has going for it is lots of hot chicks. Other than that - you have to import. Pete

Just an acknowledgement of all the people PMing me to include Bruno. They argue that Bruno is actually a space alien, therefore making the movie Sci-Fi... so... ok - it's now in the poll. I have to check around to see if/when District 9 and Moon will get shown here. I have a bad feeling that they won't :-( I've been looking for the Rocky Horror Picture Show on DVD for five years now and nobody ever knows what the heck I'm talking about when I mention it... Pete

Dare I venture the not-so-far-fetched, but easily forgotten opinion that status is something that people usually have to earn, and even then work to KEEP. Once a fellow "looses" status there's no risk he'll "misleed" anyone, since most people usually only allow themselves to be misled once or twice (and before somebody pipes up about elections - please notice that more and more people are not voting in those, which IMO is a vote against the entire "misleeding" establishment which has lost its' "status"). Point? No need to worry about Memo misleeding people. As long as reasonable folks are out there who expose the truth, then misleeders will not have many followers. Of course, you can argue that the risk exists that "someone" will always potentially be misled - even maliciously - but is that a reason to get your blood boiling, loose your nerves or risk a flame war? No. You've done a great job on both boards presenting clear and consice arguments. That people exist who still think the Earth is flat is their right. Let them be. It only harms them in the end, not you. They'll never dare go beyond certain horizons for fear that they will "fall of the edge of the Earth" - while you can swim around all you want. The sad fact is that not everyone will ever agree. If that's true then GOOD. Who here really thinks it would not be in the best interest of Macross fans to wake up one day, log into Robotech.com and find this: ALL YOUR BASES BELOND TO US! WIKI.COM.JP.FACT-LEGAL FINDS PROPERTY IS COPYRIGHT OF MORALITY OF WRITERS BLOCK'S AUTHORS TATS IS RIGHT YOU ARE WRONG PIECES OF THE PUZZLE MIGHT BE FOUND YET ENJOY YOUR ALPHA FIGHTERS RICK HUNTER IS BEST. NEWSFLASH: PIzza The HuT NAMED EXECUTIVE VP HARMONY GOLD I think that would be a splendid scenario, don't you? Or would you prefer if they actually hired people who made coherent arguments and good business decisions? Pete

Well, I must say that I have yet to be bowled over by his detailed, intricate, and compelling logic. Just wanted to put the brakes on unnecessary name calling or hostility. No point anybody getting their blood boiling over it. I personally doubt he's an HG employee. Most companies don't hire people to go around the internet spreading opinions in big caps lock on serious legal issues, that are poorly argued and half-baked. If HG DOES that then... CAN I PLS HAVE A JOBS TOO HARMNY GOLD? I CAN DO THIS TOO U NO! WATCH: WWW.WIKI-HG-IS-RIGHT.COM GO THERE. MORAL PROPERTY IS RIGHT OF PARTY IN CASE OF WRONG OF PARTY C) IF YOU THINK IT'S OK THEN YOU GET NO PROPERTY OF CONTRACT RIGHTS UNLESS RIGHT CONTRACT IS LEFT IN KOREA SUB-SECTION D: WWW.WIKI-JAPAN-LAWS.JP Can I have my paycheck now? Pete

I'm not arguing against the merits or demerits of that - but rather my point is something altogether different: look - one of the reasons Robtech.com seems to suck and HG seems to suck is for the simple reason that they keep banning people with different points of view or people who for better or for worse want to bring new information or different interpretations to the table. One of the strengths of MW is that, despite the fact that the site is dedicated to the original Macross, it doesn't pretend that lots of members didn't have their beginnings in Robotech, it doesn't pretend that there's an on-going debate around the issue of Robotech-Macross, and it doesn't ban or chastize people who want to debate the issue ad infinitum. All MW does is ask that the entire debate be kept to one thread and not spill out into the rest of the forum - which is a reasonable request. My point is that we should welcome Memo here and also invite him to check out the other threads on Macrossworld and not call him a troll because that is not polite and it would just be stooping to the same level as the shenanigans that went on and go on at Robotech.com. Naturally the owner/moderators/admins of each website can run their site how they want, but the way HG runs its' site is something I don't like - namely they pretend reality is something else and want people not to think outside of the box. That's very different from MW's "no Robotech" rule - which isn't meant to supress discussion, but to focus the site on the original Macross, since there are other fan sites dedicated to Robotech anyways. The rule in no way bars people from bringing up Robotech as it relates to Macross, which does pop up in numerous threads, it doesn't bar people from selling or trading or buying Toynami merchandise, it doesn't bar them from discussing the copyright issue -in fact it invites them to do so in this topic. I personally think that what likely pisses off a lot of people is not so much the legal mubo jumbo of who's right and wrong but the APPROACH at RT.com and of the Robotech commnity in general which is BAN! SHUT UP! PURIST! FLAAAME! YOU VIOLATE OUR TERMS OF USE!! .... all for just asking a question or posting some information that might or might not be pertinent/correct. The vast majority of us are just simple fans who have no interest - no monetary specific real time short term or long term interest - in who is right or wrong in this dispute, and NONE OF US have the access to ALL of the materials involved in this case. I personally agree with you Seto - in terms of the evidence you've shown and the line of reasoning you take. But my point is something completely different: Why don't we be different from HG in terms of how we handle the way we treat people around this issue? You know - people love Macross NOT because Big West owns the Copyright - they love Macross because of the story, the characters, the mecha, the art, and the music. None of us would care one way or another about who owns what and who is right or wrong if Macross wasn't essentially worth caring about. It would be interesting if Memo could step outside of this thread and just check out all our discussions of the various Macross sagas and mecha and toys and figures and models and maybe he would find that being into Macross is worth it. And then, once you begin to see that Macross is cool, you start - I think - to understand more accutely the injustice of a company claiming that you essentially can't legally enjoy a good anime or the by-products of that anime. And that is really the bone most of us, I think, have with HG and with how Robotech.com treats people regarding this issue. I just don't think it would be right for us to gang up on Memo. I would like to think Macrossworld and its' members are better than that. Pete

Then maybe we could take a TIME OUT for one second and ask: Memo: Could you please not write in Caps Lock all the time, but instead using normal lettering? Is there some technical or biological reason why you persist in writing in caps lock? This is a fair point. It would help for mutual understanding if you could refrain from putting everything in caps lock or at least give a satisfactory reason why you "must" use caps lock all the time? Pete

Your welcome. It would be nice if Robotech.com could apply the exact same standards of fairness I was talking about in defense of your right to post your opinions at MW.com over there to other people, instead of hiding behind Harmony Gold's "terms of use" policy. Pete

Oops. I think I just crossed a line... (runs back to the other side of the line!) Pete

At the risk of getting ass-whipped - I'm going to stand up for Memo on ONE small point: namely his right to post whatever arguments he feels are appropriate, as long as he is not explicitly swearing, libeling, lying, insulting other people - which I do not see him doing. Yes, his caps locking is a bit irritating, and yes his arguments don't take into account all the facts. But in my opinion, expressing even factual wrong opinions is not trolling, nor is it trolling to link to what someone feels to be supportive. I guess what I'm saying is - personally I would hope that we could lay off calling him a troll and making it personal. You don't need to. The information available speaks for itself. The entire thread speaks for itself. Let Memo post his opinions. Go ahead and tear them down for the one millionth time. He has a right to be wrong and to persist in being wrong if he wants to. And as long as he isn't breaking the rules of Macross World, as long as he's not insulting other members, calling them names and calling them out - then he's not trolling. Now - you might say that by posting what the majority of us consider to be completely false information and bad lines of argument, he is trolling because his posts rouse people into outrage, pulling their hair out, thinking "oh man, this again!?" etc etc. But I think we need to accept in good faith that in life there will always be people who just totally 100% see things differently then we do, and not get so emotional over it. I say this as someone who - as you will note from all the posts I have put into this thread - is vehemently ..displeased (to put it mildly) with HG's behavior and flaberghasted that Robotech has any supporters left... BUT I would hope we could be polite to Memo anyways and respect his right to say and write things that go against what we think. Pete

They took a double for the body and just CGI'ed the face. Schwarzenegger did the "voice over" ... although there wasn't much voice there... As for the "large amount of humans vs. small amount of machines" .... Well, people still breed after nuclear war, and they still enjoy scientific knowledge and the benefits of the division of labor. I don't see how it's far fetched to suppose they could have organized themselves like that. Besides, maybe things get grimmer? The future Reese described comes AFTER what we saw in Terminator: Salvation, where Reese was just a kid... although that was a pretty blight future too. I dunno... It's not like they spent their time lounging on the beech and picking daisies.... But I'm biased. I always liked Terminator, and my girlfriend (now no longer broken up) took me....so I have to be happy. I can't be all critical of Terminator 4 because that'll reinforce her "so why did I bother taking you if even you don't like it?" attitude... I'm not saying it was the greatest masterpiece in sci-fi history... I guess it was the equivalent of Transformers in 2007. I was looking forward to the film, I got to see it in special circumastances and it was an all around joyful moment in my life. Pete

I mentioned District 9 in my original post... I just...had no clue that it had ALREADY come out in theatres Sorry guys. That's what I get for living in Poland, where things are always a couple months late... Will insert District 9 into the poll now. I have also heard of Moon/read about Moon ... and again ... didn't know it had already come out. Pete

Ok, I know that 2009 is not over yet, but the summer is over, and that's when most big sci-fi films get shown anyways. District 9 and the Time Travelers Wife might turn out to be the greatest sci-fi works in Human history, thereby negating this poll's legitamicy and bringing an end to the galaxy as we know it... But somehow, I don't see that scenario realistically playing out...and it would be fun to have a vote and discuss which movie was the best. For my part, I'm voting Terminator: Salvation. For those of you who would like to know my reasons, I invite you to the Terminator: Salvation thread, where I have spelled out in exquisit detail why I'm hard pressed to vote otherwise. The fact that I haven't actually seen any of the other movies, also makes me a tad biased... Be that as it may, I get the feeling that the only worthwhile one I missed out on was Star Trek, which I'll probably get on DVD...or maybe not... but it was probably good. I'm totally not ever going to waste my time seeing ROTF. I liked the first movie - and I think I'll leave it at that. I will probably get GI Joe on DVD, because I would like to see it, but not terribly driven to running to the theatre to see it. And of course, I truly do want to see the Ghastly Love of Johnny X. But seriously - Terminator: Salvation was a great movie. First, it's Terminator, and it's been a long time since we've had a Terminator film. Especially a Terminator film that finally delivered on showing us the future. And this film was very moving and I liked it. It hit a sentimental spot. I know people complained and will complain and most of you guys will probably disagree with my vote on this one - but I for one found the film compelling. I loved the Marcus character, I loved the theme. I loved the action. And I guess I really, really love the Terminator franchise... more than any of the other ones that came out this year...so... Still curious to see what others say Pete

Actually - here's what I'd do: Macross: The Quest for the SDF-1 And yes, feature the return of Ichijo Hikaru, and Minmei, and Misa - and explain what's been happening to them, and feature all of the classical designs and make it ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE the Robotech Canon and then go out of your way to license it in the USA. Just to screw with Harmony Gold :-) Do exactly what the majority of Robotech fans are dreaming of - only do it better and do it outside of Harmony Gold and bring it to the USA just for spite Pete

Ah what the hell. I got a few PG OO Raisers too. Might as well. Maybe it'll inspire me to get some paint and do a really ace job on it. It'll be interesting what with the 1/60 scale, since the Raiser is a "fighter jet" to have it in scale with the Macross Yamatos However, what I'm really looking forward to as the Blue Frame Aestrea (my first Astrea) MG and the Kyoshikooky (or however its' spelt) and HGUC Unicorn Gundam. I guess I'm a big Unicorn Gundam fan...at least aesthetically... I already have both the MG Ka. and the Titanium MG versions built... I'll be happy to build the HGUC versions as well. I just think its' a fantastic design. Hope the poesseability on the legs of the HGUC is perfect given how the transformability of the MG hinders the knee joints... Aaaany way ... yeah Now I better build what's on my list and on my desk. Worse possible thing is to have models go unbuilt and stakc up... then it suddenly becomes a chore...not fun! Pete

My one suggestion would be to call it "Darick Hunter" instead Pete

It's not just him. All of the "Energon" derivative combiners do this. Bruticus Maximus and the construction vehicle one (forgot his name) also do it. They just recolor the limbs, but it is the same mold. So basically it's three molds, out of which two of them get doubls. I agree - it is pure garbage. It's also no fun. Pete

I would, but knowing HG they'd send me a cease and decist, claiming that the Dalek bears an uncanny resemblence to Rick Hunter, and they own the trademark. See... this is really honest to gosh what just flaberghasts me. NO SANE BUSINESS EVER WANTS TO GO TO COURT. EVER. The vast majority of such disputes are always settled outside of court. Court means millions of dollars in legal fees, slim changes of getting those fees back and slimmer chances of any "definitive" win. Maybe nobody has noticed, but the anime market (films, series, toys, models etc) is not a multi-trillion dollar business, and the economy right now is not booming. Most businesses are happy to just cover their costs and stay alfoat. Most businesses are doing everything they can to lower their costs in order to survive. But then again... Most business actually MAKE SOMETHING or OFFER A SERVICE. I guess if your only primary source of revenue is maintaining a death grip on a trademark to a little known tv show from the 1980s, then your principle activity will be suing people to hold on to that trademark. BUT I can take a crap, put it in a jar, call it Super Mondo Bot, and trademark it. Then, I can scour the internet looking for one or two people on Earth who JUST MIGHT have also decided to put their crap in a jar (you would be surprised at just how many people probably do this...) Then, I can threaten to sue those people for it. Meanwhile, I can put my jar of crap on Ebay and try to sell it for a million dollars, with promises of a second jar to come in the near future. Any wagers on how many people would be up for buying my jar of crap? Not many. And this is a good metaphor for what will become of HG is they continue producing more lawsuits than actual products and merchandise. Again - it's nice that they're ambitious and want to do a live action movie. But in the meantime, while they're waiting for WB to buy their proverbial jar of crap for a couple millions dollars, they could at least take a piss on the fandom once in a while (to follow through with the metaphor) and produce some other stuff. Technically, there are the Toynami 1/100s... but again - those initial molds came out years ago. In that time, Yamato has created three versions of the VF-1, and new 1/60 versions of Macross Zero valkyrie. Bandai has made 1/72 models for Macross Frontier, as well as the DXs. Oh yeah, and Macross Frontier came out. Meanwhile, beyond the limited run Masterpiece Toynami line and the 1/100s...nothing zero nadda nil has come from HG. Well, there was Shadow Chronicles. Ok. I guess it all boils down to the numbers. They must be making money off of this stuff - some kind of money - to be able to keep going. It's just a very strange phenomena in my eyes. Heck - most business who DO come into conflict with other businesses find that it is always in everyone's self-interest to proceed with the conflict in a discreet manner. Burning bridges and creating flame wars on the internet isn't good for anybody's business. Telling retailers what to sell and what not to sell is not going to make them want to offer your product in the future no matter how nice a deal you try to make with them. Few anime retailers like the idea of compromising their independence - even if for "financial gain" - which in this day and age is not exactly something anybody is actually enjoying... Pete

Opening Scene: Pete notices that the "Next Macross Series Thread" has about 4 pages and a thought flashes before his mind: "Interesting discussion of potential future plots of future Macross series has really progressed and people are throwing out some innovative new ideas...let's have a look see!" Opens last post. Reads: Makes face. Continues reading: Considers for a moment... Reaches key argument: This is true. There is no porn with mecha in it. Good point. Macross needs to break this last frontier and be the first enterprise to create a series about Mecha Porn! Although... weren't there some Hentai anime with aliens in them? I had just kind of always assumed that aliens = mecha....that is...I find it hard to imagine ANY alien species in the galaxy that DOESN'T have giant robots Pete

That's because for as long as I can remember, people have been hearing only two main things associated with Harmony Gold: 1. Mega super new movie/series/blockbuster/action/great/wonder product coming....soon...just around the corner...just you wait and see...really... 2. By the way - YOU'RE BANNED! AND YOU'RE SUED! AND YOU MUST CEASE AND DEC...er...desist...oh however you spell it... It would help them if they did more than just these two things... Pete

Ok - now I know too... But dag - episode 23 was creepy. I mean...I will grant them that they certainly hit the nail on the head with the music track... but still.. And Haruhi...I guess I just got too comfortable with her being "normal" - and the thing is, insofar as the second episode of season 1 establishes her as alienated, isolated, and completely not fitting in - I guess after a bazillion episodes where she seemed to fit right in very nicely with the other members of the SOS brigade, this episode just reminds us how...wierd she is nevertheless... And yeah..Kyon losing his head? Then again - as a calm person who periodically goes ape sh!t on the world...I kind of know what that's like. There's only so much a guy can take before loosing it. Kudos to Koizumi. No matter how dumb Haruhi is, it would have been...not good to hit a girl. And not because she would have blown up the world...but just on principle... Although girls DO have a tendency of driving guys nutts sometimes...still... Anyways - it was sweet how they made up. And it's sweet how Haruhi so obviously loves Kyon :-) .... I wonder why? Is Kyon her secret inspiration? After all...despite his grumbling and complaining, it IS true that he also has a vibrant wonderful imagination...and he at least has some understanding of women...unlike that other guy...tatu-what's his name... As for Tsurya The Laugher...for the longest time, I considered her to be a hyper high school kid... but now after watching Haruhi-chan, I wonder about her amazing powers... and kind of putting one and one together...she is Mikuru's "friend" ... is she also a time traveler? Or...something?... Pete

Reading that, here's the image that flashes before my mind: The US anime industry is a bunch of fanboys who don't ever produce anything of their own and spend their time fighting over trademarks and copyrights of things made in Japan that have lives of their own. On the other hand - it seems that these legal back-and-forths are so common that maybe we (including me) shouldn't overdramatize. Just because somebody sends you some piece of paper that says "cease and decist" doesn't mean anything until an appelate court rules on your case - which usually happens years later. Most times, parties prefer to settle out of court. These guys shoul settle out of court. And they really should rethink whether or not it's wise to bug fan websites and small retailers who are just trying to market their stuff. Pete

In the end there are two things that bring about this state of affairs, and both have (IMO) little to do with the bad economy, except insofar as credit is hard to come by these days: 1. It is immensely hard to compete with free fan subs that are free to download. In order to compete with that, you have to be able to offer something immensely more attractive AND, most importantly, you have to market your product to as wide a group as possible. Free fan-subbers don't particularly care whether 100 or 100 thousand people download their work because they do it out of love and out of a sense of wanting to practice their translating skills. But a company has to market to as broad an audience as possible. Marketing anime cannot be limited to marketing DVDs however. As the most successful cartoons in the USA have shown, the model is always the same: cartoon/comics/toys/possibly movie/books/various merchandise. A company that focuses only on one aspect of this (for example the cartoon/anime dvd aspect) either needs to be working alongside and in tandem with companies that focus on the other aspects of it, OR they need to expand their business and do more. That's where the credit aspect comes in. For a venture like this to really succeed, you need a whole lot of money up front to invest in all the angles. 2. Legal problems resulting from licensing and trademarks. In the end, this is a big downer, because by the time you finish preparing all the contracts, signing all the documents, reading the fine print, paying the lawyers, making sure you're following the (ever changing) laws.... the anime you're bringing over is old hat, everybody's seen it on the internet already, and people are into something new. By the time your DVD hits the shelves, it will be way too late. This is why laws need to either be harmonized between different countries or abolished altogether - the economy is global, ad information and cash travels quickly and without consideration of borders. Any company that is hindered in its' market activity by having to conform to the artificial conventions of different countries/different legal systems is going to loose out to companies or individuals NOT hindered by this. I would go so far as to even say that the entire tax system needs to be overhauled because legal definitions of concepts such as "profits" from which taxes are collected are all wrong. After all, fansubbers make a "profit" too - because the true definition of profit is when you get more units of subjective value in exchange for less units of subjective value. Every transaction in the marketplace is always "profitable" in the sense that the transaction would NEVER take place if the market participants did not actually think that they would benefit (profit) from the transaction. But in the law, and in the rules governing accounting, profit is just what you make over costs, and in some cases it can be manipulated even more than that. We have seen that the manipulation of the legal definitions of profit, loss, revenue, interest etc etc has led to a huge mess in the global financial markets. Meanwhile, markets that are not hindered by artificial definitions of economic concepts nor by laws are thriving DESPITE the depression. In short - there's too much red tape for a company like ADV and others to survive when the credit lines dry up and the economy goes south because so many resources are consumed when they have to conform to completely abstract laws and conventions that have no real bearing on their activities, and which fansubbers and individuals don't have to worry about. The net result WILL be to make the anime industry go under ground and to create yet another black market. But that's what happens when laws and regulations are written in accordance with the fantasy imaginations of professors who never actually worked in the private sector and spent their lives creating pie charts and looking at agorythms, graphs, equations and models instead of considering how the real world works. Or... It could just be that demand for anime is actually shrinking, not just as a factor of overall demand decreasing due to credit becoming tight and consumers raising the rate of savings... One needs to take into account the unfortunate possibility that less people are interesting in anime?... hard to believe though. So many cool robots and boobs that one would think this genre will last forever Pete