Bri

Okay! Watch this video on YouTube: Haruhi Suzumiya, Actor Toma Ikuta to Appear in Gum Ad. Breath turns girls into Haruhi characters.

Hilarious!

I finished watching Bakemonogatari TV episodes and was abit perplexed that Tsubasa's story wasn't really completed? Will they explore it further in the OVAs? The show is studio SHAFT at its weirdest with frequent "RED" "BLACK" "BLUE" and "WHITE" screens flashing during action scenes. But the story and dialogues between characters saved the show from otherwise very experimental animation that isn't everyone's cup of tea.

I tried watching Bakemonogatari a while ago, but took a break from it. I got to the third episode I think. Unfortunately, I get the feel that it's one of those shows with the propensity of loosing stuff in translation, as I've been told the wordplay which constitutes 99% of the series is hard to capture. I really like Senjougahara though ... prototypical psycho-girl friend of pure win.

I'm very much in two minds about this anime. On the one hand I love the interesting experimental animation, the great soundtrack and impressive VA performance, but on the other hand it's just a harem comedy with very conventional one girl per arch build up, and the supernatural element in high school with monsters, possessions and vampires is very cliche. It tries to hard to be different and cutting edge but kind of fails at it...

A few recent posts about the relationship between HG and Tasunoko made me wonder about the following situation:

what happens in the case of a breakup between the two? HG owns the trademarks on Macross but needs the license from Tats to have access to the copyrighted material for the Robotech animation and merchandise. Tats on the other hand can't license it's SDF Macross and DYRL rights effectively to another party as HG sits on the trademarks in every major anime market outside Japan. Mexican stand off? Would anyone be able to shed a light on what would happen?

That con must really be hurting then. What I've been curious to know is if HG is planning on renewing the license with Tatsunoko? With the popularity of the Macross series, I wonder if Tatsunoko is charging a higher premium for SDF:Macross, even though it's 28 years old? I also wonder if the cost of retaining the license to Macross is still generating enough profit for HG to keep it going? Are they trying that desperately to get rid of Macross? If so, I wonder if they'll in fact, renew the license whenever that comes up. I dunno, just virtually thinking out loud.

Since HG renewed several of their trademarks last year I don't think their relationship is going to end soon. Why else would HG spend several thousands of USD if they would not be sure about their agreement with Tats?

So if I get permission to bring a DVD of, I dunno, Zardoz to some country where it has never been shown, and I show it publicly...then I can claim trademark to Zardoz in that country? Cool.

Only if that country is the USA. As Azrael said the US trademark system has a peculiarity that it counts first usage of a name/symbol (and you'd still need to use it in a commercial sense as in sell Zardoz DVDs in your example). Other countries, at least the ones we looked at in regard to the Macross trademark, have a first registration rule.

HW Japan offers normal SAL for larger items and it does have track and trace but you just have to be careful as sometimes EMS is cheaper that SAL as the size of item increases.

Unfortunately, the whole point is not to have track and trace, SAL with track and trace suffers from the same issues as EMS. Without track and trace, there is a large chance to escape the whole customs clearing procedure (as SAL small pac only gets sampled with a chance of roughly 1 in 10), which makes SAL small pac shipping time so much faster. Another benefit is that without going trough customs there is no 20% VAT nor $25 surcharge for administration costs. You refer to SAL parcel.

As for Fedex, it just as expensive as EMS but it is 4 times faster (due to faster custom clearing). If I pay for fast shipping I don't want my stuff to sit around for weeks in Amsterdam.

Planetes is getting so much love that I might just have to spend my hard earned cash and check it out...But not before I watch Patlabor: The New Files...

Seeing Planetes and Patlabor mentioned in one line kind of made me think how similar both are in some respects. Two groups of misfits going about in their daily lives. Non standard main lead characters, hmm only thing missing in Planetes is Goto.

As for anime:

Finished Sora no Woto: Was quite good and it had a very Macross ending, also I want a modelkit of that spider tank.

Finished Munto: one time where I have to go against public opinion. It gets burned down quite often but wow on the animation front. You can see the it was a labor of love for the people at Kyoani. So many little animation details and visual experiments. I loved it. Shame they get more recognition for their far more safe romantic adaptions.

That's not entirely true...they did "G-On Riders" in 2002, and "Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirou," which ran from 1993 to 2008, and its... (remake? Sequel? I dunno...) "Hakken Taiken Daisuki! Shimajirou, which is currently ariring.

Not the most impressive of resumés, but they ARE still at it.

Hmm, I have no doubt you have acces to better sources then I have but BW is not credited as a contributor for any of these series with either ANN or Anidb...how annoying.

Edit: Ah I see, the Japanese Wiki page.. checking it now with google translator. 株式会社ビックウエスト should help

Edit 2: Okay, it's quite small: Big West Advertising: 15 employees, $11mln annual turn over, "advertising agency specialized in advertisement planning for media such as TV, radio and magazines and in sales of Internet adds" (Jobstock).

Moving forward, When Big West pushed for new Macross productions, the circumstances of each production where different. For starters, Macross II, Macross Plus, Macross Zero did not have the obligation of producing one new episode every other week. This eliminated manpower that a company like Tatsunoko could provide (in the case of Macross II and Plus). Second, when Big West produced Macross 7 and Frontier it had enough sponsors (in other words, $$$$) and a lot of people involved in the productions that no further "help" from a company like Tatsunoko was required to produce the animation.

Do we know for sure it was BW pushing for Frontier? Other then being involved with Macross, they haven't done anything anime related in years. I can't escape the impression that they are just a rights holder these days.

All things considered, any attempt to compose a rational theory to explain away the use of designs from both the original Macross series and DYRL in newer main continuity material is always going to be a complete boondoggle so long as Kawamori doesn't want to be tied down to one version or the other. There's simply no rhyme or reason to his use of the designs from either series, since he's played mix and match with both on more than one occasion.

[...]

By all accounts they're using the DYRL designs just because they look cooler half the time.

Seto nails the issue here. Any attempt to find a logical in-universe-explanation for the all the style differences is going to end up in a headache. Still, I have some small hope that Macross the First will be able to provide a working synthesis between DYRL and SDFM.

A question, so when did Kawamori started working for Satellite?

"Although Kawamori participated in Satelight's founding in 1995 with the production of Kenji's Spring (released the following year), he did not officially become one of its board directors until 2003. Satelight produced projects without his participation back then, Kawamori worked on projects without Satelight's participation back then, and both still do so now." (Source Egan Loo, 2007)

I appreciate that you not only reinforced the underlying theme of my post but also readily dismissed the whole medium of anime as the equivalent of vapid reality programming.

No worries and I should thank you for showing that sarcasm, while universal, can be beyond the means of the individual. The vast majority of anime out there is simple, disposable entertainment, requiring virtually no cultural baggage to understand so yes, on average, anime is very much the equivalent of reality television.

This kind of information just can't be found on the net. It would require talking to an industry insider who worked during that period. If we ever want to get an answer to all the questions in this thread we'd need to send a macross world reporter to the press and industry day on the Tokyo international anime fair

Dubs are like decaff coffee, Coke zero and light beer, not quite the same but they serve a purpose (...ok...except light beer). To each his own I guess.

(Although sometimes a dub can add something like the BBCs hilarious dub of Lum, which ironically seems so much more in tune then normal accurate dubs and yes I read tv tropes at times)

Regardless of your Japanese language proficiency or the subtitles quality/accuracy when you are not both ethnically Japanese and born and raised within the confines of said country Anime is not only not intended/marketed to you but there is no way you could even possibly hope to understand the intricacies of the medium. Might as well just give up wapanese pasttimes like watching Japanime and go ahead with normal 鬼畜米兵 hobbies.

Oh noes, I'm not a native speaker so I cannot hope to understand the depth and intracacies of America's Next Top Model...

Now shall we get back on topic?

Back on the legal front, there's one thing I've been wondering about for a couple of days now...correct me if I'm wrong here:

Studio Nue created Macross at the behest of the (what was the name..."Uisu"? Something like that) Corporation.

Uisu (or whatever they were called) folds, and Big West steps in to finance the series.

Big West doesn't have enough money to do so, and calls in Tatsunoko.

Tatsunoko now has part ownership of Macross.

They're also listed for DYRL; but after that, Big West and Tatsunoko part ways.

Does anyone know what the deal is there? Was their agreement only for the series and the movie? If they'd had a successful partship (and, Star Pro episodes aside, no one can argue that it WASN'T successful), why didn't they continue working together? And why would Tatsunoko give up that partnership?

The last co-operation I can find between BW and Tatsunoko is the Irresponsible Captain Tylor from 1992-1993 (source ANN).

I don't think you should read to much in to this partnership as BW is a small company. Advertising agencies like Big West are often part of anime production comitees to run the marketing effort but to my knowledge they are rarely the initiator/senior partner (with the exception of Dentsu which is a very large firm). That role is often for broadcasters, publishers or (multi)media and entertainment groups who can supply the captital needed.

I don't know anything about the Uisu Corporation but if they folded during preproduction then it's not unlikely to assume that BW either saw an opportunity to step in or had commited to deeply already to bail out. Either way BW role as anime sponsor seems mostly incidental. Speculating further, this would fit with their very limited involvement with anime outside of the Super Dimension block and a few TV shows/OVA. Marketing (let alone sponsoring) anime is unlikely to be their core business.

As a side note, I haven't been able to acces the BW website (bigwest-ad.co.jp) lately nor can I find any link on the macross.co.jp website.

All remaining info I have is that it's owned by Kaya Onishi and

Big West CO.,LTD.

6-12-3 Sotokanda

Bigwest 3rd 5F

Chiyoda-ku

Tokyo

Started watching Banner of the Stars. It is kind of confusing in the beginning, but it is better now since I am on the 4th episode. Lots of large space ships attacking another group. No real cool mecha like a mobile suit or variable fighters. But the store seems to focus on the human emotions in a war setting.

Yea, it focusses heavily on Lafiels and Jintos development. In my humble opinion the whole Seikai trilogy one of the best space opera's out there.

See, I knew as soon as I said it that someone was going to say that it's anime, not average Hollywood, and so it's not fair to compare them. You're damn right. Because something like Star Trek (or even some animated film like Toy Story) only cost crap tons more to make and market, runs twice as long, and costs half as much, it isn't a fair comparison. An hour-long anime, however well-animated, should cost even less.

You guys need to stop saying "It's anime, it's Japan, it's just how it is." Your willingness to bend over and take it is part of the reason why it's still expensive even though Best Buy's got a freaking anime section now. Be firm, wait for Bandai USA to license it, and get the whole OVA for your money.

There is nothing special about anime sales. It's all about market size and cost of production. Movies like Star Trek already turn a profit on the box office and have a much lager audience to spread the costs over. An OVA like Unicorn has to recap it's money purely through DVD/merchandise sales to a small audience. The only anime that sells in the same manner like Hollywood movies are Studio Ghibli productions who have the same worldwide audiences and cinematice releases.

The anime you find in the Best Buy is no longer current material and only has to recoup the costs of the licensee. Unicorn is new and a worldwide release by Bandai, so there won't be a license. The Blu-Ray already has english dubs and subs (even the Japanese version).

As region encoding is uncommon with BR there is a risk of cheaper American versions to be imported back to Japan, hence the similar price. In the end it's a matter of choice, you pay the premium to see it now, or you wait till there is a discounted version (excluding the illegal option of a pirated BR rip).

You won't see any decent quality fansub of the movie until the DVD/BR gets released and that won't happen for another 4-5 months at least. The Haruhi movie is doing extremely well in Japan (for an anime) and it has been announced that it will be shown in more then the 24 cinemas originally planned. Probably delaying the DVD release.

Any torrents you are going to find in the mean time will either be fakes or camrips.

Embarassing to admit, but this is the first time I heard that Hikaru was assigned to the moon for duty. I can only imagine how that must have messed with Misa's mind.

Hmm, doesn't that conflict with Hikaru being a test pilot for the VF-4 on earth during the 2010-2012 period?

I understand that the quality of express services differs per region. For example I have some Canadian relatives who start to rage at the mere mention of the word DHL, while they are the most reliable express service over here. I use Fedex reguarly for work and haven't had any complaints sofar.

EMS is handeled by the Dutch postal service, TNT Post. Unfortunately they see EMS as some kind of cash cow. TNTs customs service has a backlog of weeks and you have to pay a hefty service charge upon delivery at the door assuming the delivery guy even bothers to attempt a delivery and not dump it at a local post office (your lucky if he puts a note in your mailbox) as it costs them to much time (they get paid for the number of deliveries completed).

On average EMS here, is two to three times as slow as SAL shipments. Unfortunately most Japanese retailers do not allow SAL small pac (without track and trace) for Valks and other large/expensive items.

HLJ seems to have worked out a deal with Fedex.

Example in my case: Fedex works out to be a bit more expensive in shipping from HLJ (600 yen or so on a 1/60 VF27 as EMS has a 20% discount) but has cheaper clearings service costs ($15 versus $25 TNT EMS). So costs don't differ much in the end, except delivery time Fedex is 4-5 days, EMS 3 to 5 weeks, and Fedex does not force to pay on delivery but sends a seperate invoice. Not to mention the benefits for my sanity of not having to deal with the TNT customer service again. I don't always care for the delivery time but it stinks when you order an item as a birthday or christmas present and it doesn't arive in time.

Thank goodness for a Fedex option.

I'm so happy that I won't have to suffer trough TNT's EMS "service" any longer.

I seriously doubt the Military and Police on Macross 7 have the Man power to search every square mile of the city.

A Valkyrie would be of little use in Police raids with the exception of the Rescue of the samples which was a diversion to cover the theft of the City.

The City 7 has a Foot print like New York City and the NYPD has a Force of like 30.000 Police Officers and they can't eliminate Crime completely the Vampires were only taking like a Few dozen a day/week.

Even if they searched the City systematically the Vampires had enough intelligence to infiltrate the Most secured part of the City (Fold Core) they most likely would have heard of it Hours before the Police/Military got with in a Block.

I would agree with Miles here. The external attacks from Gigile kept the military busy while the vampires could do their scouting, monitoring and research. Given that M7 has no cellular network, civilians informing authorities of vampire movements would have been a lot more difficult.

I have to agree that the vampires looked a tad lame in their trenchcoats with masks, but they are a key part in the Protodevlin strategy. Not to mention they are used for events in Fire Bomber daily lives.

As for the rest of the episode, always fun to see Milia in the cockpit again. I was chuckling as the enemies were trying to shoot at her but missing, they'll never hit her. She is way too good for them, lol. Also props for Basara saving the day just like how they would on Russian Space Station, lol (I laugh because it is a fun reference, but that movie has terrible science).

Using a first generation variable fighter to beat multiple much more advanced VF-14 derivatives just shows how much of a master Milia is.

Lockheed already mocked it up. And it doesn't look as bad as you might think.

I have to admit, critical as I am of the F-35s esthetics, that the TB paint scheme looks stunning on this plane. They should all be painted in this scheme.

In terms of reviews we're up to 13.