RavenHawk

Just finished Macross Frontier. Absolutely LOVED it. Honestly, my favorite Macross series of all. The last 5 episodes felt rather rushed, especially with the coup d'etat and pirates thing and everything, but I guess they were trying to squeeze into that 25 episode mark for the 25th anniversary. Fantastic final episode, too. I think that what impressed me most here, forgetting whether someone likes the characters or concepts in one Macross sequel versus another, was that I thought the background music was done by far the best in this one. Really enhanced every moment.

As much as I still like the original, and my son uses the old movie's soundtrack for background music when he's playing XBox, this just hurts... it hurts so much... And what's with that weird smiling guy?

I don't think any of that was planned for the show and, on the off chance that it was, I'm going to pretend it never happened... HG is creatively bankrupt, or Tommy Yune is creatively bankrupt? Yeah, I was never clear on how Stick was there but, then again, then weren't really too clear on WHEN, exactly, it was happening. I was under the impression that it was at least a good few months later.

Yes, all the "new" designs in Shadow Chronicles are old MOSPEADA designs which hadn't previously been animated, or like this, which is taking a AMDriver design and putting on some MOSPEADA parts.

I'm glad that there are other countries involved in it, and not just a company out of Singapore, which made me nervous about it before. On the other hand, $30 million doesn't sound like much for a movie that will clearly require a TON of special effects. Also, while I've seen some excellent movies come out of Australia, I've seen some absolutely terrible Asian movie which were filmed in Australia...

Where have they announced the order? I've only seen different online retailers claiming different orders and release dates, all mutually contradictory. Shinobu just seems like a safe bet to me since, much like Ray coming after Stick, it's a different head, a different accessory, different color, but no significant new molds, thus a cheap way of building capital before expensive new molds.

Which reminds me that we'll probably have a Shinobou before we get Yellow.

Maneuver-Blade on preorder at HLJ. http://www.hlj.com/product/SHE33051 Has no shipping estimate. Anyone have any guesses based on previous experiences with HLJ? Still can't figure out from the Studio HalfEye page whether there are going to be different variants of this one. I did email the folks at Studio HalfEye. It is clear that their knowledge of English is like my knowledge of Japanese, so the email they sent me went through a translation program. The one point they were able to make was that the only place they are aware of to order this item outside of Japan is HLJ.

I don't think there is much demand, but for what there is, I'm sure eBay can satisfy it with old printings. I bought the complete run, all 21 books or whatever it was, a couple years back on eBay for $30.

Nice! Hey, I have a question for the other Beagle owners here. I display mine a lot in bike mode, with the attachment to hold the bike to the stand. Problem I have is with removing the bike from the stand. To get the connector to come off the bike, it has to flex to the point where it is splitting open, and now looks like it's going to break. Anyone else having this problem? Am I doing something wrong here?

Aren't those omnibus editions out of print now too? I think all of the RPG stuff currently in print makes no references to Macross material either. I don't think that there is currently anything CURRENTLY being printed, manufactured, or licensed by Harmony Gold that uses the Macross trademark.

They didn't REALLY cover it in Sentinels. What I mean by that is that in Sentinels (the "movie", the novels, and the comics), the REF went to fight the Robotech Masters. There was nothing there about colonization. That's the excuse for why Dana and Bowie were left behind. However, now in the new RETCONNED Robotech version of Sentinels, it is said that the REF was going off to find colonies for humanity and also, along the way, face the Robotech Masters. This was never mentioned before Shadow Chronicles (Prelude comics, Art of Shadow Chronicles book). My point is, yes, they are kind of ripping off the various colony anime and scifi things now, and no, they didn't do them before, but it's all being done retroactively.

Well, I'm up to episode 14 of Macross Frontier and I'm absolutely LOVING it. It's to the point where I'm forcing myself to ration out episodes so I can make it last, and not just watch half a dozen in a row. I haven't done that since Band of Brothers. I'll write more later, so please no one spoil it for me, but I really don't get why some people didn't like this. I also loved the "flashback" to Macross Zero, since I just watched that a few weeks back too.

I'm not really clear on why people are starting to talk about the Beagle line being dead. I'm assuming it's: 1) Rand/Ray is delayed 2) HLJ has Scott/Stick on clearance In response to #1, I most recently saw a date of May 25th for Rand/Ray. This will still only put it a couple months delayed total, which is what happened to the first release too. Seems standard. I've been assuming first to second week of June anyway. As far as #2 goes, this seems pretty normal to me too. They've spent 4 or 5 months selling this premium figure at a very high price (though still worth it, at least compared to the competition), you've pretty much saturated your market as far as people willing to pay that price are concerned, and now you do a price drop in preparation for the second release. I don't know, but it seems like people are worrying over nothing and jumping to conclusions.

I think Jenius got some preview pics from Over-Drive-Inc, so they must have a preview one. Jenius' site says he's away for a few days though.

Same thing here. The Proto-Garland is the only one with the fixes in place. However, I also have the Factory Color Garland which doesn't have the fixes, but I never had any problems with it, seems tighter somehow. My Proto came with a broken hip. Yamato shipped me a new one free of charge within a matter of days.

The prequel comics have them getting disbanded, if I remember correctly.

That's why I've neve bought from them. The shipping is a killer. Angolz seems fair on prices, and shipping seems about $10 cheaper than hlj somehow. Good to see ya, mospeadia.com

What is the diff?

The prequel comics say and show exactly what is at the pyramids. I'm not going to ruin it for anyone who hasn't read them though, but if you're interested, they're actually fairly decent, all things considered. Arcee plays a BIG role in them, too, but it's the Arcee from the first movie's scrapped designs and that toyline.

They were actually never going to be connected together. The toys from Robotech were just rereleased with the ExoSquad name because they looked similar ENOUGH to fit in, but it was never going to go beyond toys. I know where you're coming from, since I assumed they were going to connect the shows, and the new aliens who showed up at the end of season 2 would be Robotech-related. I read an interview with writers from ExoSquad not too long ago and they confirmed that these aliens were to be completely new. They were never going to have a connection to Robotech whatsoever. Harmony Gold's activity was minimal, if any at all, just dealing with the toys, which might in reality have been all Matchbox and not Harmony Gold at all.

Pretty much, though even in the original MOSPEADA he had a decent amount of backstory to him.

I really liked those old comics. Kind of made it make a little sense how the heroic character changed into the one seen in New Gen/MOSPEADA, and also how his home life deteriorating affected his relationship with women. Let's be clear on one thing though: In those Wildstorm comics, it wasn't Wildstorm that made sure that the Eternity stuff never happened. It was Harmony Gold making sure that Eternity never happened. Wildstorm just published what they were given by Tommy et al.

No other real-world riders on here?

Good point. With the MOSPEADA and BGC and Megazone stuff I have, I've kind of gotten used to being begrudgingly stuck with some pretty high prices, if you want quality and transformability. Having some variety to pricing on Macross Frontier toys is kind of refreshing.