macross_fan99

Since this board is more active than the official Robotech forum, I have a question.

What exactly is protoculture in the robotech universe? I'm watching Robotech for the first time and just started the new generation and it seems like even the writers didn't know what they were talking about.

Its culture, fuel, flowers, food, technology and sometimes it even seems like they are reffering to software as protoculture. What exactly is it?

Its like they use it as some sort of all purpose element to describe things that don't really belong within the individual series that were combined.

You've misunderstood the situation. Smart consumers have access to means to learn about the contents of a publication before purchasing.

Here's the website for Shonen Jump: http://www.shonenjump.com/j/ (which took all the time to type in the name into google to find).

In some bookstores, smart consumers can also sample publications via tachiyomi. Of course, as bookstores are not libraries, some are wrapping products in plastic to prevent abuses of the generosity (and keep items from becoming unsaleable due to tachiyomi mangling). Nevertheless, if you ask a store clerk to look inside, most will open it for you to have a look (not a read).

So, you're arguement holds no merit, as the manga industry isn't telling people to blindly buy, but they are telling them to not abuse IT that make IP theft possible.

Ok, I should have been more specific in my post. I was actually talking about Manga in North America not in Japan but I realize now that I didn't mention that in the post.

The way I see this is that they don't want the readers to know what they are buying since they will pick and choose. They don't want scans so you have to buy blindly. For them the internet sucks since it creates smart shoppers.

Here is the text. The website has some questionable material so I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link to it on these boards but you can do a search through sankaku complex if you want. I have bolded the part I am referring to.

Much of the blame for a 20% drop in North American manga sales is being pinned on scanlation.

The annual report originates from “pop culture” industry information peddlers ICv2.

Their white paper describes how manga sales in the US and Canada fell 20% in 2009, down to $140 million from $175 in 2008. In 2008 sales declined as well, dropping 17% from their all-time peak of $210 million in 2007, meaning the market declined in size by one third in from 2007-2009.

An excess of titles and the industry’s failure to successfully market josei manga to maturing fans of shoujo manga are cited as reasons for the decline, along with a decline in TV exposure “[keeping] hot new titles such as Rosario + Vampire from achieving the kind of success that previous Shonen Jump hits have enjoyed.”

However, the bulk of the blame appears to be reserved for scanlation and fansubs, the perennial publishing industry bugbears:

Another key factor in the slowing sales of manga is the presence of so many volumes of manga in translated form on the Internet.

Just as the anime market in the U.S. was gutted by fansubbed downloads available on the Net for free, manga is now facing its own crisis created by the availability of free unlicensed scanlations on the Web.

Manga readers lack the “collector mentality” of comic book fans and also tend to be both young and tech savvy.

The fact that manga is “long-form” entertainment, with many series running to dozens of volumes (Naruto Vol. 48 is due out in June), even taking into account the fact that manga is very attractively priced compared with traditional American graphic novels, it is very expensive to collect the entire series in paper.

Increasingly retailers who saw their once strong anime sales shrink away to nothing are telling ICv2 that manga readers are sampling new series online and only buying their favorite one or two series in printed form.

The almost total lack of digitally distributed manga capable of competing with such versions by now hardly needs mentioning – strong demand for convenient digital manga is apparently something publishers in both the US and Japan are desperate to ignore.

Oddly, the report completely fails to mention that there was a major global recession commencing in 2007 – apparently macroeconomic climate has no effect on manga sales worth mentioning, just like in Japan.

I can't find a link that talked about the manga industry, but to sum it up:

The manga industry is blaming declining sales on the readers themselves. They don't like how readers are able to read manga online and then only buy the ones they like. They want buyers to buy blindly so the companies get their money. If this isn't the wrong approach to the problem then I don't know what is. They don't like smart shoppers and are trying to blind consumers.

I'll post the link if i can find it again.

The comic industry will die out in the future anyways, especially the heavily independent manga industry. Why share your profits with a large company when you can post your manga online with ads on your website and get all the money yourself. Its only a matter of time. Same with the music industry, its only a matter of time before artists go independent and sell their works themselves.

I didn't need a professional news cast to tell me the industry is in trouble, I've seen it happening over the years at conventions and stores that sell anime. There has been less and less for sale because people just aren't buying it. The same is happening to manga at the moment and for the the same reason that anime died out.

The companies that were bringing this stuff to the western markets stopped caring about quality and flooded the market with everything they could get their hands on since the fans were hungry for it and were buying everything they could get their hands on. Unfortunately this meant that for every good series there were 5 really bad ones which in turn means the fans were getting burned when taking risks buying these things. So what happens? They start downloading the stuff since at least they won't lose any money if it sucks.

The problem is that once you get used to getting the stuff for free you never want to go back to paying for it. There is also the value factor. Once you download anime for free you stop giving it its value since its free so you always think its not actually worth money and refuse to buy it. This actually happened to me with music when i started downloading it. I no longer value music at all since it was so easy to download and I could never actually spend money on it.

Basically the companies killed their own market by flooding it with bad product. Plus there are many people like myself that would rather not see this stuff than actually have to pay money for it. The companies can't win.

Using Macross City's status in macross plus as a indication of the planet's condition is somewhat misleading. If Macross city is somewhere near Alaska and thus approaching northern latitudes (where temperatures goes through significant extremes and can only support hardy plantlife in a VERY delicate ecosystem) then regeneration may take significantly longer than in more temperate regions. Its quite possible that areas south of the 49th parallel have experienced significant regrowth and rehabilitation by 2040 and beyond.

Actually when Isamu defolds and he is approaching Earth he is coming in to orbit near Africa. You can tell by the monitor that shows the Earth satellite system activating.

Plus if we were going by the theory that the Zentradi concentrated their attacks on populated areas then most of the Forests in Northern Canada would have survived and we should see some sign of them. I would try to see exactly where they flying over but its likely they didn't bother to design the terrain below accurate to real landscapes.

I've been going through the macross compendium and they mention that there is a definite environmental program that takes place so it would seem that the Earth is on its way to recovery.

EDIT: I managed to get a copy of the Macross Plus movie in 1080p and with the clearer image there are definite large patches of green when Isamu first enters orbit. Most of the planet is barren but it seems not all.

I was going with the 1% as per the post by Bri. 1% of 6 billion comes to 60 million.

It did seem like way too much for what was shown in the tv series, but I figured it was correct. Either way, I'm going to go through the compendium which should clear this up.

Eh... more like a fifth of the fleet (~795,122 ships), but the principle is the same and I don't think every ship would have been taking part in the bombardment, just those with heavy anti-battleship armaments and bow-firing converging beam cannons. I get the feeling they'd probably leave the carriers and fleet pickets out of it.

As Gubaba said, it's confirmed in plenty of publications on the subject. Contrary to the popular objection, they weren't working with an aggressively limited gene pool either... they had ~1 million people to choose from who survived by the simple expedient of being somewhere other than Earth's surface when it all came down. The implications of mass cloning are discussed as well... proliferation of hereditary diseases was what killed the cloning program in 2030.

I'm guessing the macross compendium would be the best place to read up on all this? Is that basically wiki for Macross?

EDIT: 60 million people is more than I would have thought would survived, but it at least allows for all the expansion into space. Why even clone people if you have that large a population?

You don't need a huge population to maintain the species genetically viable. A real life case would be Iceland - which is that of an island with 300k-ish people.

Don't have an exact number, but a few thousand would be in the "ok range". Plus, the infusion of zentra/meltra genes into the pool certainly helped with genetic variability as well conferring traits like improved resistance to vacuum (go Ranka ).

Yeah, but try to turn those 300,000 into millions like they seem to have done in Macross and you are going to end up with a lot of similar looking people.

Is there any mention of the total Human population since they started to recover from the attack?

Alright, so I just went through the last episode of Macross Plus again trying to get a good look at the Earth and there doesn't seem to be any vegetation anywhere. All the shots of the planet when Isamu is entering the atmosphere are blue and brown. This would seem to follow the DYRL story more than the tv series since in the tv series they at least mentioned that some forests had survived.

Now about this cloning, is this actually confirmed somewhere or is this all speculation? And if they are cloning people wouldn't they have a very small pool to choose from. There weren't exactly many survivors after the zentradi attack.

And I wouldn't look too much into the finer details of the workforce and such. If they had wanted the series to make sense they would have kept the whole population together so they could be easily protected instead of spreading them out all over the place. And why not move to where there was still vegetation so they would have soil to plant and food to eat? The original series is full of little things that don't make much sense.

Its been canceled already. The store was set up in a small town and there was such a flood of otaku going there that the company decided to stop the promotion.

They had no parking and were causing too much of a hassle for the local population.

Is there any plan to have some sort of torrent available for the dub?

It would be much easier than having to download the movie is separate files and having to join them.

The first video has been released. It looks like it might be the opening cinematics for the game.

http://www.ace-game.jp/

After the website loads up go to the movie section.

@chronocidal You're right, there were some jungles left in the series, I'd forgotten about that. I'm not sure if that is the story to follow though since in Macross Plus the Macross is the DYRL version. But I guess it would have to be the tv version or the radiation would make it impossible to live on Earth.

@Redwolf Macross 2 is not canon so that is not a good source of info in this case.

I was hoping something would maybe have been said by SK at some point, but I guess its up to us to interpret as we see fit. I've always found it kind of depressing that after all that fighting the remaining humans were left with scorched Earth as their reward. I would like the planet to at least heal so they could start from scratch if you will.

Realistically though, the amount of dust that would have been sent into the air would have blocked out the sun for years and those explosions would probably have burned off most of the earth's oxygen leaving them with nothing to breathe. With no trees or marine plant life to produce oxygen I don't think life would ever be possible for many decades, maybe even centuries.

After the zentradi attacked the Earth the planet turned into a barren wasteland, but what is the current status during the Frontier timeline?

In the original Macross there are a few shots that show some treens and grass but for the most part everything is barren

During Macross Plus Isamu and Guld were fighting over barren terrain so the planet had not recovered but I was wondering if there had ever been anything mentioned regarding the conditions of the environment. Has the planet returned to being a green planet like Eden or does it continue to be a dead planet.

Haha, that's awesome.

Wait a minute...since when were RT fans concerned about legal issues?

Since they were Macross fans who just started watching Robotech. That's my post and I'm well aware of the legal issues surrounding the property.

Those are some amazing photos. Even among destruction there can be some beautiful scenery.

I can't believe there are people who actually want this show to be incorporated into Robotech. I saw 2 episodes of it on youtube and although I have no idea what they were saying I got the general idea from what was happening. And most of all the animation on this thing was horrid.

If someone told me they wanted to incorporate something of this quality into a show I grew up watching as a kid I would be disgusted and would hope it never happened. I'd rather have nothing new and live in the past then have astro plan. I swear that animation was made in flash.

Little kids won't care since its animated and they will enjoy it no matter what, but its brutal trying to watch this show as an adult.

Okay, NOW I'm pissed at HG for denying me an English version of this game! The graphics are pretty decent, considering the fact that it's from a past generation console, far better than that technicolor mess that passed for buildings in RB: Battlecry. My friend actually handed down a Japanese PS2 to me, but where the heck do I find the game? Any online stores that still carry this title?

And yeah, that Cat's Eye mission still haunts me to this day. Even with SUPER Packs and a YF-1R, it was a borderline nightmare.

I bought a copy off ebay but it ran about $50 a few years ago. Not sure what they sell for anymore.

If you use component cables on the ps2 the graphics get a definite upgrade and they look great on and HDTV.

You should check some of the other videos. In the later stages the background is covered with hundreds of zentradi ships and dozens of them come swarming at you and there is no lag anywhere. Sega did a hell of a job with the game. Part of the reason I could never get into the psp games is because of how high this game set my standards for a macross game.

See, I was having a good day, and then you brought up that Cat's Eye mission, and now I'm having all these awful flashbacks... (twitch, twitch)

That mission actually killed the game for me. I got so fed up, I stopped playing and never bothered to finish it. I only drag it out for player vs. player (turn off all the targeting, enable fog, and hunt each other sniper style... it's stupidly fun).

So then you don't know, after beating that horrible stage the next stage has you escorting it down through the atmosphere. Not as annoying as the first but still rage educing.

I can't really think of any game that does escort missions well aside from ICO.

One more I'd like to add: Predator - Concrete Jungle. Mediocre graphics, dodgy storyline, and the built-in limitations in cammo takes the fun out of controlling a Pred. Game mechanics were pretty wonky, too.

And, of course, there's Robotech: Battlecry. About the most disproportionate game in terms of difficulty, and its age really shows in the graphics even for a cell-shaded game. Also, the way the enemy AI is designed forces you to stick to jet mode during space missions, and GERWALK mode during "protect-the-stadium/bridge" levels--using any other modes gets you killed really fast. Still, I keep coming back to it again and again, because it's the only game I have where I could control a Valk.

Time to mod your ps2 and get a hold of this beauty.

It puts battlecry to shame. And you'll never have to play those annoying escort missions again. I'm looking at you cat's eye.

Honestly, I would only want it if they let Sega handle it like they did the ps2 game.

The psp games are ok, but nothing spectacular.

I've been waiting for this since I heard about it a few weeks ago and I plan on buying it as soon as it comes out. It looks very good.

Final Fantasy 8 and 9 are the only ones that come to mind. I knew they were going to suck almost from the beginning and I still finished them.

I don't really have many since if a game sucks I will just stop playing it. I play games to have fun, not to torture myself.

Found another site with a few more screenshots. A lot of them are the same but there are some new ones.

http://videogamerx.gamedonga.co.kr/zbxe/1428219

And is anyone else hoping they change the controls from the previous games? They're great for the mechs, but controlling the planes is a total pain. I hope they give us a set of different controls for them.