Gubaba

It's the novel (seven parts history and three parts fiction, as one commentator called it), so yeah, there's the occasional bit of wizardry and sometimes a character will die a year or so earlier or later than he did in real life. But the edition has hundreds of pages of footnotes to explain where the book deviates from history. I'm more into literature than I am into history anyway, so reading the Romance rather than the Record is fine for me. And yes, Cao Cao is the "bad guy." I still liked him A LOT better than I liked Liu Bei. Kongming's my favorite, and he's still around in Chapter 96 (which is where I currently am), but he really can't carry the story by himself. When he dies (and I'm sure he will, before this whole thing is over), I'm afraid that the last shred of interest I have in the story will be gone, unless someone else of comparable interest is introduced. That said, when the book is good, it's VERY good indeed.

Okay, it's not anime (although there is an anime) and it's not science fiction (although there are SF adapatations), but I think it kind of fits here... A while back, I deicded it was time to tackle the Four Chinese Classics, so I picked up Three Kingdoms at a Chinese book store near my house (a brown, boxed, four-volume set, translated by Moss Roberts, with a note inside the first volume that says "NOT FOR SALE IN NORTH AMERICA." Hmmm...), and nine months later, I'm about 400 pages from the end - which sounds like a lot, except that the whole thing is about 2200 pages long. I'm duty-bound to finish it, but at this point, almost all the characters from the first two-thirds of the book are dead, and it kind of feels like a not-as-good sequel. Finishing it has become a real chore. Has anyone else here read it, and if you have, did you have the same problem?

I think it was in an essay in the back of one of the English volumes...somewhere between 23 and 26 (I don't have them handy so I can't check). The writer mentioned (IIRC) that Nagano got upset when someone mentioned that FSS seemed like a prequel to L-Gaim, and responded, "Five Star Stories has never been L-Gaim's rear end!" The Timeline is funny...some things (like the destruction of Kallamity Goderce) are told in enormous details, while others are much too brief ("Atropos goes into seclusion with an infant LED Dragon"...who would of thought it would take more than 700 pages to explain THAT line?), and a lot of things aren't there are at all. So although we all know that Amaterasu and Lachesis end up together, there's still a lot that will be left unanswered if he drops dead anytime in the next forty years (unless he drops everything and does nothing but draw FSS morning, noon, and night). It kind of reminds me of Robert Musil's novel, The Man Without Qualities. As it stands, it's incomplete at more than 1700 pages, which are set during the months before WWI. Musil died before he could get any further, but, from his notes, it's clear he planned to take the story through WWI and into WWII, with no big jumps in the story...obviously, this would be impossible, unless he had started writing the book when he was five years old. He really seemed to believe he had infinite time to complete the book. I'm not really complaining...FSS can be confusing and frustrating, but that's just because it's so damn good, and if he decides that he'll quit writing it, I'll be upset, but I'll still be grateful that I got to read as much as I did.

Reminds me of Daicon III...in more ways than one.

My other thought was to pick up one of the old Imai/Bandai kits and use the pilot from there...but I haven't done it, so I don't know if it works.

I doubt it...the TARDIS sound is quite unique...IIRC, it was done with "treating" piano strings. Or it may just have been an elephant in labor...

Patience alone doesn't do it...you've also got to REALLY BELIEVE that Nagano is immortal...he's been doing it for, what, 23 years? And he's only covered about 200 of the 5000 years he said he would cover. Not only that, but with loose ends drifting about from both before and after the FSS timeline, at the rate he's going it'll take him 7777 years to write the thing... FSS is up there with Sandman as one of my all-time favorite comics, but I've given up hope of Nagano ever actually finishing it. As a side note, my understanding is that he strenuously denies any connection between FSS and L-Gaim...I wonder why, since you'd have to be brainless NOT to see the connections. Or maybe I misunderstood his comments...

Ditto for Dr. Manhattan's naughty bits.

Dude, that's TOTALLY the tagline for the movie... (cue ominous music) DEEP MOVIE VOICE GUY: The scientists have seen it...and it's already TOO LATE!

Hell, you can download either the ISO files or the first few epsiodes in MKV if you want to check it out... Conversely, if someone wants to post comparison pics, that would be cool...but has anyone at MW bought either of the sets yet?

And even if it does get cancelled mid-stream, we can always hope that it goes out like the original Gundam...they scrambled to put together four episodes to wrap everything up after it had ben cancelled, and those are four of the best episodes in the whole series. In fact, based on the "Tomino Memo" for what would have happened in epsiodes 40~52, I think the abbreviated ending is better. Back to Macross 7, I'm currently rewatching it, and I wish there had been some kind of retroactive cancellation that would have forced them to tighten up the first twenty episodes into maybe nine or ten... Or, instead of remaking it, maybe we should take a page from one of the guys at Robotech.com, who is rewriting Mac7 to fit in with Robotech...Max is now Admiral Scott Bernard, Ariel is dead, Mylene is now Marlene Bernard, and Basara has been renamed "Nick Vasillis." Sounds like a winner to me!</sarcasm>

It kind of bugs me that Hasegawa hasn't released TV version pilots...a few years back, I tried to file one of the pilot figures down to approximate the TV version...it didn't work very well. And I drooled with envy with I saw that Superostrich that somebody built with an accurate Minmay figure in the back seat...

I think it's a bigger re-write. When it said ADAMS and LILIN+, they showed these kind of ghostly things that looked kind of like the little clicky guys in Princess Mononoke...Of course, there are also the two new Evas and glasses girl thrown into the mix...I think EVA 2.0 is going to be very, very different from the TV series. And yeah, there are four movies, but the last two will only be about 45 minutes each and are a double feature...so REALLY it's only three.

The regular VF-1D did, but the "Virgin Road" version didn't. I didn't mind that, but I wish it had come with pilot figures of Max and Millia in wedding garb.

Okay...I listened to it up to the point where he said you mentioned him solely to ride on his coattails (to, presumably, the same status of fame and fortune that he enjoys). Then I really realized that there were better things I could do with my time...so I downloaded your podcast and listened to that instead. Very funny (and thank you for pointing out what NEEDS to be said...that "Virgin Road" is the worst-animated Macross episode ever, and that Hikaru and Minmay totally did it while she was staying with him (but why was he sleeping on the couch...?)), but I'm glad I'd already seen the show. If I hadn't, I doubt I would've been able to follow your "synopsis." Don't worry, you're not the the first to have been hoodwinked by that wascally wabbit...

And your comment would have carried more weight if you had watched more Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Really? I thought it was a Supervision Army ship that didn't quite make it...

OK, one final parting shot from me today...I love how he goes on about how Robotech hasn't had to "reinvent" itself...but it's not like Harmony Gold hasn't TRIED; they just never got anything completed until recently. Purity should never be confused with incompetence.

Cool! A good respont is difficult to find these days, so if he has multiple responts, that's just amazing! But yeah...I'm downloading it now, and will listen to it the next time I want to feel superior...

Is that like Nikolai Tesla's "Death Ray" that he claimed caused the Tunguska Event...?

Doctor Who ALWAYS scared the wits out of me when I was a kid...real "hide behind the sofa and peek out every now and then" time...

Oooh, which episode is that? (I don't want to go through all of them...I like to be selective about which colossal train wrecks I slow down to gawk at...)

When I was in Japan earlier this year, I met someone who did a little bit of work on the first movie, and he said that Gainax will be lucky if they get the second one out by Christmas. Now this info is definitely third- or fourth-hand, so you can take it or leave it...

It's still a step up from "Death to Smoochy"...

Aganst my better judgment, I'm reviving this thread, because I just listened to the episode that VF5SS mentioned...Wow. I would go into specifics of exactly why it's thoughtless to say that they changed Hikaru's name to Rick Hunter because "Hikaru Ichijo" is lame and stupid; why it's mindless to say that every macross story has the same plot: guy who flies a jet likes a girl he's never going to have, and someone sings a crappy song at the end (Is "Voices" really worse than "Stage Fright"? And since when did Basara like girls, anyway?); why it's brainless to say that the Robotech live-action movie needs to be made for the political realities of TODAY, so a Russian captain wouldn't be realistic (and apparently it's also advisable to remove the Chinese girl, because, y'know, it's not like China has any influence now or anything); and why it's just foolish to attack Macross fans for starting "Who would win: Aplafighter or YF-21" threads when HE HIMSELF started a "Who would win: Robotech Masters or anyone else in all of SF" thread at RT.com (You'll never guess what his answer was). But really, dougbendo (and you can look 'im up on myspace!) isn't worth a reasonable response, so I'll just quote a great 20th century philosopher: "What a maroon! What an ignoranimus!" (By the way, he said he was INVITED to Macrossworld some time ago to "write forums" or something...can anyone confirm or deny this?)