Prime

I'm glad someone had a lot of time on their hands.

According to George Lucas in an interview in Entertainment Weekly. Darth Vader(as we have known him) will only be in the film approx for *spoiler* 3-5 minutes .

That pretty much jives with everything that we've heard about the end of the film. What I'm more concerned about is whether or no James Earl Jones will reprise his role for whatever dialog Vader will speak. Damn secrecy!

I believe I've seen an interview where JEJ has confirmed that he is doing the voice. He finishes by saying, "who else are they going to get?"

And I've seen nothing but confirmation about what the spoiler states.

The presentation is too fairy tale where it could be more 'reaslistic'.

It seems that is the way Macross is headed in general.

Interestingly, when I picked up my DVD copy of GITS 2 at my local Futureshop, they had it ranked in DVD sales at number 9 overall (I don't know if that is store-specific). I thought that was pretty damn good considering...

I can't see DYRL doing well theatrically at all. Even though it is excellent animation, it certainly looks dated when compared to the likes of the CG films like GITS 2 and Appleseed. And like you guys have said, straight animation is going to have harder time attracting older audiences because of the "Disnification." ANd younger fans aren't going to like it because it isn't straight action and doesn't have trading card battles. CG Anime films, crappy or not, are going to have better luck at the box office in that regard.

And as far as DYRL goes, I can see even Robotech fans going, "WTF?"

Brilliant.

Science? He was a nerd!

I dunno if this is old or not but...WTF???

DARTH TATER???? 

sorry but i think that is the height of ultimate silliness. talk about diluting the brand

Yeah, god forbid children should enjoy anything Star Wars related!

Especially since the series is aimed at children.

CG is top notch, I love the way the Vipers use thrusters to move around.

Yeah, for a weekly show it is really well done. I saw the mini-series a while back, and the first series episode last night. I good start, I thought. I'll give it a chance and see how it develops. The Cylon warriors were pretty cool too.

I think in the end I like both series for different reasons...

Art of Revenge. I'm doing the pee-pee dance in anticipation of this book.

Definitely.

Speaking of books, here is the cover for the novelization.

As for Sara, well if you could make out her dead body then I would say for sure but it isn't clear enough to say if she is dead or not.

Isn't the first rule of scifi that they aren't dead until you see the body?

one thing I wished had been there was a Zentran Scout picking up the signal of the AFOS folding and reporting back to Breetai's fleet. Remember when the Zentran first show up in SDF Macross Exodore comments that they picked up a signal from earth and that is what they tracked in.

I think that was the Macross they tracked in when it originally crashed...

I was hoping that the Samurai Champloo Vol 1 DVD would be sold here in Canada at the main chains like Best Buy (although it is listed on the American site) and Future Shop. Alas, this appears not to be the case. So likely I'll have to resort to ordering it online.

Where might the best place be to do that? Suggestions welcome.

So who's going to be ordering the Konami Trading figs then?

Graham

Those old Viper's still rock after all these years...

For anyone who is thinking about what career to pursue, it is a very good idea to talk to people who have worked in the field for a while.

So us software guys can tell you to avoid it like the plague.

It is very true that for most of the industry the corporate attitude towards motivation is "you'll take what you get and like it."

OMFG Vader's hands are too small.

He must be a gypsy.

That is the LVT Avenger II, I believe.

The gunfire on the testing range in Plus was also pretty good. Boy, do those pods sound powerful...

The Wookiees!

The wookiees?

It's all about the wookiees...

I don't see what the big deal is, I think it's actually not such a bad idea, no worse then color coding the subs when multiple people are talking.

It is just annoying when captions pop up that explain the blatently obvious to those who can hear the sound ok.

I didn't like Macross 7 at all.

I guess for me it deviates to much from the setting and style I had come to expect from the series. I had seen the TV series, DYRL, and Plus first. I enjoyed those in part because of their "feasible" technology and military hardware and having many aspects explained with either real physics/scientific ideas or standard sci-fi phenomena (folding, spaceships, aliens, and the like). Those series just seemed more grounded to me, and that helped me get more attached to the characters and care about them. Especially in the case of DYRL and Plus (and eventually Zero) I loved the excellent animation as well.

I guess ultimately Macross 7 just deviated too much from what I enjoyed from the other series. I didn't like the animation at all, even though I understand the reasons for it being of poorer quality. I find the character designs too stylized and cartoony compared to those for the other series. I also didn't like Basara from the beginning and never warmed up to him. I just got so tired of hearing the same "listen to my song" and those J-pop tunes over and over and over and over again. It just got so repetative. It's like knowing in Voltron that at the end of the show the lions are going to join together and use the big sword. You know Basara is going to demand everyone listen's to his song. By the end I just wished someone would finish him off. So there was little hope I would like M7 since I hated the main character.

Like others have said I didn't like most of the Valkyrie designs for the Sound Force, mainly because I liked the straight military style of the Valks from the other series so much. The whole spiritia thing was just a little to magical and "out there" compared to the rest of the series. Perhaps I would have enjoyed M7 more if it wasn't tied to the rest of the Macross universe. Then again, maybe not. Ugly character designs, annoying main character, recycled battle sequences, ackingly bad songs, uber-repetative phrases, and superhero-tights mecha pretty much doomed the series for me.

I like the farting sound of the TV series/DYRL the best.

Still the master...

Vader's back.

And there's going to be trouble.

Anyone else pick up on this stuff?

It is definitely a strong theme in Zero...