Aegis!

Well , it seems this is the right time to spend some pounds on SOC toys , I reccon this will be the last time we´ll see a SOC toy made from a Kawamori design ( admit it , Bandai just hates macross ). I think I´ll buy all 3 just for the sake of combining them but AFAIG the Aquarion Mars is just fugly, the other too are fine , actually the Mars is the only one wich features too many colours ( the others are just Red/Green). What really get´s me though is the fact that Kawamori himself , on a number of interviews has critisized the industry for letting stereotyped animes get through to production , he has even said that only series with a big name get to be aired but why doesn´t he use his big name to produce an innnovative series ? It´s seems strange he would personally decide to do a combining mecha series. He is well respected in Japan , enough so ( IMO ) to demmand the producers and companies behind to do a series as he wants to and not as they ¨asume¨ the public wants it to be; especially when his is the director.

hahahahaha , I´ve gotta agree totally with you there. I´m getting sick and tired of watching the same old ¨young geezer with angst attitude gets the cool mecha¨stereotype. Really , it´s not enough we have to deal with the same Gundam designs year after year after year ( you get the idea ) , but we also have to deal with Shinji´s bastard clones ? Anyway , I´m really exited about this series ,for starters it´s got Kawamori and Yoko Kanno working on it so it has some degree of potential. It´s has that epic-storytelling feel to it so it really gets my attention , I´m just waiting to see what the story will present. As for the mechas , well , it´s Armored Cored-ish so it´s fine with me. They´re original by any means but at least they´re pleasing to the eye.

I agree with you Graham. For more info on scales and VF-0 toy measures just look at my sign. Just imagine a valk bigger than the Koenig , IMO that WAY too much. Remember that the bigger it gets the more parts = more potential QC problems , also it´ll weight more which means more shipping costs. If profitability is such a big concern to Yamato why venture with lesser-know-mecha like the scopedog and the Garland / BGC Motoslave ? specially when they don´t have a fully stablished fanbase (Yamato-wise). Is it just me or does Japanese companies like to ignore they consumers all too often ? ( me thinks of Sony, Bandai, etc..).

HEY CONGRATULATIONS!!! You´re the 100.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000th person to discover the marvels of sarcastic speech Here have a happy meal with a face as a gift. Next time take the time to read other people´s post before talking sh¨t. Here , let me make it easy for you so you don´t have to search 3 pages back. Here´s my original post regarding this thread topic: BTW , i´ve been here since 2001 , believe me when I say I don´t give a F^*K about some old geeza hijacking a thread, I´ve a fair share of experience there. It ain´t my problem if people waste their life with OT posts ; it´s bad already we waste so much time debating things on topic.

Mate , is it so damn difficult to understand this topic has NOTHING to do with Zero´s ending or overall plot ? we´re trying to talk about Macross Zero production values and the companies effort behind it. Sorry about the SA part tough. Graham , sorry if I wasn´t clear with my question , but I never say if we could expect for a DIRECT sequel , just a new series , could be before or after Zero. I too think it´s pretty impossible to expect a direct sequel , mainly cause that would be SDF macross , but even a side story is possible. hahaha , wasn´t it obvious Kawamori is interested in eastern mythology ( Hindu , polynesian , etc...) ? seriously , we´ve known that for some time now. My point is, now that Aquarion seems to gather all this themes it is more probable that he´ll either expand more afterwards OR move onto something else in his next projects ( Macross included) Dude , please , don´t hijack the thread. I totally agreee with you Graham , I always wonder what the heck does BW do everyday ,seriously , do they expect their series to be know solely by accidentally being rented at japanese stores ? that´s lame. It´s like they´ve never come across the word ¨marketing¨ in the dictionary. I think the main responsible for Macross´s chronical failure to be noticed and, ironically , its success is no one else than Kawamori himself. How is this ? well , his negligence and negation to do another Macross series after DYRL is the cause Macross didn´t catch up with series like Gundam wich released series after series based on the same amount of success as macross had in its time , plus the fact that BW attempt to do their own Macross without him was not accepted by all fans ( if any) all summed to today´s condition. This is an example: Gundam fanboy : Dude , another Gundam series , where will the colonies drop now ? Macross fanboy : DUDE !!! a new series ! GOSH THANK YOU FOR HEARING MY PRAYERS. isn´t it sad ?

sounds good... I always thought that a macross sequel would revolve around this aspect of the universe... which I find much more interesting than this magic/song energy thing that they've been exploring. The idea in DYRL I find much more enjoyable and touching.. that something as simple as a love song could awaken dormant memories and feelings bringing about change and a desire for peace... not this craptastic song as weapon nonesense that macross 7 left us with. Everything sounds fine with that theory EXCEPT for the fact that it WASN´T the Supervision Army who came to earth and altered human´s evolutionary process , it was the PROTOCULTURE. Maybe the SA recovered ( somehow ) the protoculture records about earth and saw it as a last chance to eliminate the Zentradi threat. Anyway , this is totally Off topic. We´re talking about Big West, Bandai , Macross and the possible intent to hint a future series within the production effort behind M0 ( not within Zero´s plot)

Nice cover , I hope we get a load of lineart and color pages , I actually hope forsome nice illustrations. Is this thing going to include some Macross Zero desings or not ? at least the Cheyenne and OCTOS Destroids ?

Profitable indeed, but not in the case of Macross thanks to the license problems. I mean, would I ever see an R1 release of Macross Zero? And I do believe we'll get new Macross for the 25th anniversary. BW should feel under pressure to MAKE macross a profitable series , it´s just a case of negligence from their part no to promote and sell Macross as a great saga as it is. You see Gundam and even newer series being promoted everywhere , Gundam ain´t popular because of its story or contents , it´s because Bandai knew marketing was THE major factor for it to sell. Gundam is a product of Bandai´s great marketing tactics not the other way around. What has BW done to sell macross in the past years ? the 20th anniversary DVD was IMO the only effort they did excluding Yamato´s toys.

Mate , calm down , are you on something or what ? that´s way to much reading Just if you didn´t notice but....this thread ain´t for speculation nor a freaking M7 thread either Go to my first post and read it please , cheers. back to topic. As I said , we´re closer to the 25th anniversary so Kawamori might be waiting for that. Also but not less important is the fact of the huge growth of anime licenses in the US , nowadays it´s normal for a recently released show ( in Japan) to be inmediatelly licensed by someone in the US , this is a sign that anime IS a profitable market , I hope Bandai and BW notice this and talk to Kawamori for another development.

That´s esxactly my take on this. We buy some , they make some. It´s as simple as that. Unfortunatelly it seems it wasn´t enough to buy ALL 1/60 and 1/48 releases , it didn´t make a complete impression on Yamato that we´re happy to buy everything from them. Now Macross , for some extrange reason is no longer profitable , even though the 1/60 were enoguh to trigger the production of the 1/48 which also sold like hell

threads like this only depress me I ain´t criticizing anyone mind you , is just that whenever I read another one of this threads it reminds me how fool a company can be and how miserable its fans become because of that It took me a while to realise this but Yamato REALLY and I mean REEEAAALLY Does not give a f*ck about their consumers , japanese or otherwise, period. They´ve grown BIG now , ya know. They`re just too important now to care if they put a good product in the market , or if they actually put anything out in the market for that matter. They no longer need the consumer to sustain themselves , they do not need to fill the consumer needs to make a living and make a good image of themselves like the old days when they were a small company trying too stablish themselves. wonderful were the days when I felt Yamato was the best toy manufacturer for taking macross as their flagship product , making me feel like I could dream of every single valkyrie having a toy made in its image.

Honestly, we don't know that. He may have other ideas that he didn't want to pitch to execs at the time. You can't say that once he's done with a series, that he'll go back to Macross. He may have other ideas that he wants to do that don't fit in Macross. Of course I don´t know that , that´s only what I hope for. In any case , from what I´ve seen , Aquarion seems to convey his usual/favourite themes and thus is possible that it´ll be his most complete work to date , meaning he´ll have the chance to include all his ideas from earlier works ( spiritual energy , mechas , fantasy , ancient mythology, ecology ) in a more complete and thorough manner. To this date Kawamori has only gotten the chance to do that only partially and selectively in his works ( escaflowne , Zero , Arjuna , Plus ). Seeing that , it is more probable now than ever that he´ll be satisfied enough with his work to properly dedicate his time to macross. Who knows , it all depends on BW and Bandai really , if they talk to kawamori like they did back with Macross Plus we might be able to see a new series in the upcoming years.

I wasn´t exactly espeaking about Plus´s story or anything just the fact that , at time , Kawamori had absolutelly no plans of doing Plus or any Macross series for that matter but the production companies came to him asking for one , hence we have Plus ( and 7 too ). What I was saying in my last post was that given the contents and overall project characteristics of Zero ( huge budget from Bandai and BW , Adobe´s support , etc..) it wouldn´t be strange if BW or Bandai came to Kawamori asking for a new series , just like what happened with Macross Plus. It would be stupid to put such effort on an OVA series without something to follow it , why would such big companies give Kawamori the support he needed to do a series as he wanted ( Zero is clearly Kawamori´s personal take on macross ) if they didn´t expect something in return ( i.e. like Macross Plus and 7). Think about it. What else is Kawamori going to do after covering his favourintes themes in Aquarion and the Bones production ? he would have done everything he has ever wanted in his series from Escaflowne to Arjuna to Macross Zero , so he´ll have no excuses to do another series in this theme , what is he left with ? MACROSS , a faithful Macross series. I´m hoping he´ll come back to macross once again , at least he doesn´t hate it as he did back then after DYRL when he promised no to do macross again.

Just elaborate on the idea of whether Macross Zero´s finale was intentionally made to give a hint for a future series or not. I was thinking about this while making this thread and I think I agree with that , Kawamori is totally busy with his Aquarion series and the other BONES production but looking at the contents and characteristics of those series I think it´s pretty safe to bet that Kawamori is closer to completing his life-long dream anime series ( mecha/fantasy/ecology themed series). This might be good news cause after those series Kawamori will be left free for making a faithful macross series. The question is whether Kawamori wants to make a new series ; at this moment I think he doesn´t , but as said earlier it´s possible he´ll give macross another chance after his new series , I just hope we see something like Macross Plus happen again when the producers came to Kawamori for a new series and not the other way around.

Yes, its called 'Super Dimension Fortress Macross". Perhaps you've seen it. Mate that´s gotta be the funniest joke on the board for the last year , congrats Anyway , a follow up doesn´t necesarilly mean a direct sequel ( SDF Macross) it can be anything , I´m not gonna especulate about what kind of sequel it should be cause there´s been TONS of threads about it. I repeat , this ain´t a thread for posting your ideas on a new series , is just for the sake of sharing our thoughts on the matter of Macross Zero production process and resulting outcome. We know for a fact Bandai gave the production tea a load of money for this OVA series, they got Adobe newest software for the CG work and all that , but why did they give macross such a high budget without expecting something complete , like a whole line projects ( like macross Plus , OVA+ Movie ). If they only wanted to make an isolated OVA series they could´ve made a plain and simple OVA series with the same old elements without including the Protoculture or the Unification and Anti-UN war in it.

OK , maybe this shouldn´t be here as an isolated thread but posting it elsewhere would be a waste. Anyway , is it just me or does Macross Zero lead to believe there´ll be some kind of follow up ? There are just too many things that insinuate some kind of future development , it´s not a simply case of things being left half-done but actually a trully tactable feeling of something that´ll be developed further along the time. I don´t know , Zero has certainly been THE only series in macross that´s has left me with this feelings even after months of watching the whole series. I just wanted to know if anyone felt the same way and if somebody wants to elaborate on this

meh..the bastards...we´ll never get anything out of them , as usual.

Ah, you mean Edgar La Salle? Did he at least die in that POS of a movie or whatever it is ? if Edgar died then that would be only good thing HG came to produce. OH WAIT IT AIN¨T EDGAR !!! , Silly me , it´s just a ripped off copy like everything else from HG

Gosh , isn´t this thread closed yet ? I would imagine this thing would´ve turned into a flame war after just 2 pages

It´s a shame I´ll never get a VF-5000 toy nor a VF-19S from Yamato. Well at least I can get a Koenig , who could´ve imagined it a year ago.

Double edge sword there Graham the Liquid Stone is 10 in the world, if it was 10, 000 pcs in the world, it definitely cannot fetch US$1000. and it is only a few handful of people who are willing to break the bank for it. not the masses still. I defintely know where you are getting at, but the saga of the Liquid Stone really does not give a realistic and accurate reflection of the market , my friend Noel Worse yet. Imagine Grahams words came true and Yamato DID a YF-19FP , but now they wouldn´t just price it normallly as they would but now since they´ve seen people are stupid enough to pay $1000 for a 90g piece of plastic ( ok its a yf-19 and transforms but C´mon!) they would prob. price it higher than a 1/48

I´ve gotta agree with you 100% here. The sales are totally proportonial to the quality they put on the toy , we´ve witnessed price itself isn´t such a big factor to macross consumers nowadays. The first M+ toys probably sold like there was no tomorrow mainly because there was no other alternatives or contemporary references to other M+ toys so people bought them blindfolded , this was not the case with the re-releases for 2 major reasons : 1.- they were the same toys as they made years back 2.- we had the 1/48 toys as reference to what they could really make. It would be naive for them to expect good sales , but they did and hence the low sales probably were to big of a problem for Yamato to risk in releasing another failure into the market. The 1/60 Monster was a sign of the distorted reality we lived in during the golden age of the 1/48 when we spent 24hrs asking for marvels to be produced but realistically speaking it was a ridiculous proposal in terms of cost vs sales. All this takes us to our current state of uncertainty, with all this into account Yamato sees Macross more like a hit and miss franchise than a cashcow like it did in the beginning. If we look really carefully Yamato has not produced a solid, constant and succesful line of toys since the 1/48 or 1/60 ( which for all intents is purely VF-1s , nothing new ), they´ve tried ( miserably I might add , save for the Koenig) to start new small and scattered toy lines here and there and that´s where their failure to get goods sales resides. look at the Q-rau , there´re no other are no other toys of its kind to back it up ; The Koenig ; the VF-0 project itself seemed to be a stand alone project , the unfinnished M+ line, the DYRL Helmet , etc...All of them seem like stranded projects with no further thinking into them.

Well , for once I´m happy sony is finally getting the message from consumers. although OT , this is why they get for being so full of themselves. Sony is like a person suffering from bi-polar disorder , it´s like it has two personalities , its ¨dark and oppresive Music label¨-personality , and its ¨creative and innovative computer entertainment company¨-personality. Sony Music is the bitch that ruins all of Sony CE´s innovative products ( Hi-MD , Flash Players , PSX , PSP , etc...) by limiting their potencial features. If this kind of thing happened back when the Walkman was first released I´m sure as hell it wouldn´t have been as successful. What I mean by this is that the PSX was probably halted not only because of low sales but because its features weren´t as great as it could´ve been and in the end it wasn´t cost effective for the consumer.

Well , at least they´re sending material to the magazines which means they still intend to produce at least this one product ( or at least it seems that way). I have to agree with twich in that the least they can do to demonstrate to us the fans and consumers that they´re a serious company is to for gods sakes finish the job for once in their life time , meaning they should : 1.- finnish the Macross Plus line they´ve promised. 2.- continue the Vf-X2 line that they started 3.- Do justice to the Macross Zero license BW has granted them and take THE ONE CHANCE IN A POSSIBLE 5 YEARS PERIOD that they have to produce toys for a new series. Seriously when do they think they´ll be able to make toys for a newly released Macross series ? All of their current plans to slow down on Macross seem extraordinarily stupid , considering the recent release of the unexpected Koenig. It´s such a contradiction that I can´t make sense of it all.

Damn it , this really stinks. It sounds like BW and Yamato are giving up on Macross. I don´t wanna be paranoid but if BW wasn´t willing to give licenses to anyone then what do they plan to do to sell macross products ? this is ridiculous , and Yamato looks ever more interested in other more ¨successful¨ series than macross ( their primary ticket to stardom IMO). I was expecting an enourmous lack of products on display but this is SAD ,I mean, delays are nowadays the ruling fashion for Yamato but a late ´05 release for the 1/48 GBP and an October ( read : Dicember) release for the unwanted 1/100 VF-0, are they just dumb or what ? what kind of signal do they read from boards and mails telling them not to go 1/100 ? why do they not only delay it´s release but insist on this scale ? it´s beyond me really.