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These days SDFM once a year. Macross 7, DYRL and FB2012 every 2 years or so. MII and Zero occasionally. Just started on third time on Frontier. Macross Plus twice, once as OVA and movie. These days I just I just watch the Valkyrie and music scenes of Plus and fast-forward the rest.

It depends on the housing market conditions. Rent is cheaper then a mortgage for a comparable house so you can put the difference away on a savings account or invest them in bonds or the like. If house prices are unstable or sliding, rent will be safer and more profitable. Still house ownership is in general more profitable in the long term but it's more risky and leaves you with less cash to bun in the early years of a mortgage. At the moment houses have been overvalued and prices are on a downward trend. Lot of my friends are stuck with mortages on houses they bought when the prices were high and now they can't sell them unless they are prepared to take a big loss on the sale.

Yes, this is the "predicted" list on Anime Suki, courtesy of Kaisos Erranon. Melancholy I Melancholy II Melancholy III Melancholy IV Melancholy V Melancholy VI Boredom Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody Mysterique Sign Lone Island Syndrome I Lone Island Syndrome II Endless Eight Sighs I Sighs II Sighs III Episode 00 Live Alive Day of Sagittarius Someday in the Rain Disappearance I Disappearance II Disappearance III Disappearance IV Disappearance V Charmed at First Sight LOVER Snow Mountain Syndrome I Snow Mountain Syndrome II Where Did the Cat Go? New episodes italicized.

14 to 28 but yes, it's an extended first season. The new episodes are mixed in. First one now is Ep8 Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, next one is expected in 4 weeks or so. The rerun is in chronological order not the original one.

And it's confirmed. Second season Haruhi Sazumiya mixed through the rerun of the first. Rather insane marketing campain ends.

I would guess that the difference between Macross Ace and SDFM is mainly the personal development of Haruhiko Mikimoto's artstyle. I doubt he would imitate the later Macross shows. They all are pretty lacking in character design. Frontier being the worst of the bunch. Mikimoto did the character designs for SDFM, DYRL, and M7. Together with Akemi Takada and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko he dominated character design in the 80s and early 90s. These three have pretty much created the looks for every major character in mecha anime from UC Gundam to Macross to Patlabor and Gunbuster. Plus uses the edgy sharp style of the 90s. Not sure who started that. First time I noticed it was on Fatal Fury by Masami Obari.

Episode 7 withSubs is out now. The series is starting to show more character development. Episode sets up for the Darcsen/Valkyria background.

Ep07 I got the feeling this episode was made for Niike. Not bad, but the whole the officials trying to steal the street sport felt a bit like a "Just do it" commercial.

Nice pics, thanks krespy. Glad to see the character animation is improved for the movie.

Levi's and Apple subsidize my collection habbits and travel expenses. 501's are 4 times as expensive in the shops here then in the US. I usually take some with me to resell when returning from the States.

If Frontier is your first introduction to Macross, then my guess is you end up with ADV's Macross releases instead of Robotech.

ANN and Animesukireport that next week the first episode of Haruhi Suzumiya season 2 *may* be broadcasted, based on info from Moonphase. The new episodes would be injected in (or released after as was originally thought) the current rerun of the first season expanding it from 14 to 28 episodes.

Beatbox Dub FX got some nice streetperformances but this songs got me mesmerized.

My adventures with EMS took a surreal turn today. I have called TNT a few times this week for updates but nothing. They pretty much blamed customs. However today I chatted to a person who works in the mailroom of my uni. Told him about my misery with my latest EMS shipment. He says he could fix it if I get him the track and trace number. Seems there works TNT staff on campus as well as the uni is a major client. He calls on of those guys has a talk and gives em my track and trace number... A few minutes later a call back, package is pulled from the que and on send to the uni with the daily shipment. Guy says "you owe me lunch"... In the afternoon the package was delivered to my office. No VAT, no handeling fee. Another lesson learned in the ways of the world.

I don't think there is a living soul that would dare to make a bet on that one...

I'm just not into these non-canon schemes. Then again, it's good not to like everything. Gives some financial breathing space till M&M, Virgin Road, Roy TV etc will come out.

Not a complete listing I guess, missing a few of the better known studios.

Nah, DHL got their own customs-agency aswell, and they ship in 2 to 4 days from the US or Asia and deal with VAT and import taxes. It's just EMS (because of TNT) being crap.

I have a similar problem with customs. When I order from firms like Overdrive or Hobby Link Japan and I purchase a small or cheap item (like for example a Hasegawa kit) it goes with Small Pack and everything is fine. If I order anything with a Track and Trace method (like a Yamato) things go wrong, very wrong. EMS can easily take between 2 and 4 weeks to arive. Took me a little research to find the cause. Usually items are shipped from Japan and then arive 1 or 2 days later at the hell hole known as Amsterdam. Then the misery starts. It seems the EMS-network has TNT as it's Dutch partner and items have to go through customs at Amsterdam Airport. To elaborate: in my country the shipping companies have their own customs service. That means that the government has delegated the responsebilities of handeling the customs clearing process to them. TNT's handeling of shipments is slow, very slow and they seem to make no distinction between express mail or anything. Worse is they charge an extra 16 euro for this crappy service. SAL small pack takes usually 4 to 7 days to arrive after it is send. Why? SAL tends to go through Frankfurt airport. (yes, German efficiency...). Seems they only take samples to check from the mail there and even when checked by customs the delay is minimal (Ok, VAT is added then but I don't mind as long as it arrives in a decent time). Unfortunatly the Japanese internet sellers want a track and trace method for more expensive items, I can't blame them with the risk of loss during transit they are running, but it gets annoying having to pay up to 3 to 4 times (easily 50 USD) or more on extra shipping costs for an express service that is way slower then the cheaper method. The EMS site tells me to take complaints to the national representative, in this case TNT, who off course has no incentive what-so-ever to clean up their mess. /rant mode off.

The OVA has a English Subs and Dub, the movie edition only has English subs.

You're absolutly right, I hadn't realised they could just put a Macross logo on one of their Robotech books, whether it has any link to the content or not. The only remaining question then is if the trademark covers novels or not. Must admit that McKinley book surprised me that it covers part of the Macross saga. Found an article about characters and merchandising rights in Japanese law written by Ishida Masayasu, a professor in Japanese intellectual property law. According to the paper no copyrights can be transfered due to licensing. Paper If I interpret the paper correctly, a licensee who has merchandising rights can only reproduce the characters, and at best create derivative works. In short if this is correct then anything that uses the Macross story or characters or likenesses including merchandise such as books, toys and videogames are derivatives of the original Macross copyright of BW and under their creative control unless agreed otherwise. This really wants to make me curious what kind of agreement Tatsunoko and BW have made on merchandising. edit-spelling

That video doesn't say anything about the F22 really. I mean it's close range, and we don't know who are flying. Suppose it's an instructor in the T38 versus a rookie then the outcome can't be a surprise. The good thing this video shows is that the USAF is still training close range air to air combat and do not solely rely on BVR.

It may be a bit different from the way I understand copyright and trademarks, btw same as TheLoneWolf, IANAL. First: HG can only disallow the use of the Macross name/sign in classes they have trademarked. So if novel don't fall under that trademark class then they can't stop that hypothetical writer. But as TLW says most likely the threat of a possible lawsuit would cause any publisher to back off regardlesss. However there is a very interesting catch22 at work here, that complicates things for HG. To create derivative work like a DYRL novel, novella or anything similar you would need permission from the copyrightholder i.e. Big West. To stop anyone from using your trademark in a class HG would need to show they actively use it (requirement for trademark protection). HG can't create any novels etc. given their relationship with BW so that particular trademark is essentially useless (assuming it even covers novels and not just novellas).

wow, that VF-11 just looks amazing.

Very interesting topic. Some questions, are there any non-standard weapons that are not heavy weapons? Macross seems to use mission types for weapon selections. Each mission type might have a preselected weapons package which may or may not be classed as heavy. Some examples from the top of my head: Hikaru's VF-1S gets decked out in Anti-ship reaction weapons for the attack on Bodolza's fleet as Exedols battle plan aims to attack the 2000 command ships of the Bodolza fleet. Misa scolds Hikaru for using an armor pack for a patrol mission. Birla authorises super and armor packs for V3 type missions in Fontier 1. So by this definitition if a VF25G flies with just the Sniper Rifle then it's armed with a heavy weapon but still carries a light mission pack? And vice versa if a VF carries superpacks with only Air to Air missle clusters it is using light weapons?