Bri

As the title says, HLJ cleaning inventory. Few Macross items. Some items from other mecha shows like Patlabor, Gundam and Appleseed, Megazone etc . HLJ 1st Anniversary (barely managed to pick up a Yammie YF-21 and the Wave Appleseed figs at 50% myself)

Found a Roman Album Series : Fire Bomber in prefect condition and a early 90s Cutey Honey PVC kit MISB at my local comic/fantasy store. The owner was cleaning out the storeroom. He found a few items that had never been picked up by those who had ordered them originally back in the nineties. I could have them for free if I were to take some mail to the post office for him. Off course I was more then happy to do so.

I ordered mine on the 25th and it was shipped on May 1. It arrived in Amsterday 2 days later, still in customs atm. My guess is golden week delayed them restocking. Might want to try and mail them for an update.

Robotech influence? Afaik the Japanese side wasn't even aware for a time that Robotech was more then a just a dub job. I would interpret that second underlined sentence as "If the audience doesn't know what it's missing they will consume my crap more easily" I fully agree and tbh it's ironic that even HG needs a creative director as they are essentially a distributor. Agreed, time has just passed by RT. Doubt many new fans can be won by the DVDs and SC, certainly not enough to even consider the franchise alive. So...who will turn off the lights at HG when the last die-hard fan leaves his mom's basement?

Macross II can be called alternate universe as it's history differs from later sequels so there are two separate Macross time lines. Which timeline one prefers and whether that can be called canon or not is to much of a fanboy argument for me to care about. Only thing that matters here is that it's events do not inpact later sequels and vice versa. Seto's remarks just show that tastes differ. Personally I find Macross Plus the least enjoyable of all Macross sequels as it's characters are distinctly un-Macross in behaviour and personality (and I'm not a fan of the character design style used either). Ironically it was Macross7 that drew me into the Kawamori/Nue continuity. The focus on characters over mecha, the music, the Mikimoto designs it just fullfills what I enjoy in Macross. To quote a clown: "Why so serious?" I guess Mr Barnum worries are unfounded, as the average intelligence of the American public can't in such a bad shape after all, if it's anywhere near mine

Starship Troopers was excellent imo. Verhoeven did not like the book and only loosly based his movie on it, blaming him for not being true to Hemlein's ideas makes no sense. As for my most hated scifi directors: Wachowsky brothers for making those two hideous sequels to an otherwise good movie. Peter Jackson: Overhyped and the one director that got revered for NOT adding anything to a film.

Must have been from one of the early Anime UK magazines so around 1991-1992. At the time I had lost interest in RT and Sentinels killed my remaining sympathy. My interest in Macross came back when I saw Macross II and DYRL. Took me a while to find out that MII was an alternate reality, but they saved Macross for me. As for the swithes between generations for RT, it's not like you can explain it easily if all you can do is cut and paste and play with narative. Besides kids accept a lot without question anyway, and they were the main audience for RT.

Sheer genius. "Look at that!, the smoke grenades fit perfectly in the cupholders"

Ordered a Roy and seperate Superpacks. OD send it within 6 days and updated me by mail reguarly. Good job on their part. Unfortunatly I took EMS as I never had done business with OD before. My valk is currently in customs hell as it gets special TPG customs "service". Never EMS again.

Well nudity and fanservice are as old as anime. I remember Cutey Honey's naked transformations from the 70s or Plastic little (early 90s, not that old but the jiggle counter is so funny, had to mention it.) But this is not the point. We know it is there and why it's there. However some people have raised the valid concern that erotic content, and more exotic merchandise, only allows it to thrive in its otaku subculture and gives fans a bad name. I certainly agree that alienating main stream audiences can't be healthy for the long term prospects of anime. Personally, I don't have a problem with fanservice or nudity but I do remember the 80s and 90s where I had to explain time and time again that Macross was not the same as Urutsukidoji and not all anime involves extreme violence and tentacle crap. Media hypes pushed anime underground back then. I don't want to get back to that time. Even today I certainly don't advertise that I enjoy anime in my daily life. At work one of my Japanese collegues, when asked about anime in Japan, described Otaku's as freaks that can be seen as a weird mix of a Trekkie and a pedophile. I'm sure thats a more extreme view of anime fans but it does show that there is some PR work left to be done.

Wow, nice find. It may not be news but it confirms what we could only assume before.

Wasn't that calculated risk? I mean it's still a generation behind the F119 and F135/136.

This really illustrates what I dislike about Robotech. It's a dub and editing job with a different name, not a real piece of creative work. What was good in RT, was good in the original counterparts already. Time has moved on. Since the anime boom of the late 90s anime fans increasingly disapprove of "westernising the original work". With that change any chance of rebuilding Robotech is dead in the water, even if HG managed to buy a few more licenses for a new hack job. Sure RT was cool and fresh in the 80s now all that remains is a sense of nostalgia and a few obessed fans. Trying to reanimate this dead corpse ended up with Frankenstein offspring like the Wildstorm comics and Shadow Chronicles. Wish HG'd just give up and sell their anime licenses to ADV and RT.com to a psychotherapist.

I think Macross Zero's CGI is much better intergrated with the 2d animation. In Yukikaze I often got annoyed by the style change between the two. Also while the yukikaze was very well done the backgrounds and hostiles often were not. Macross zero is less ambitious in some regards but is way better balanced and aged much better when the state-of-the art image had worn off. Agreed on the Engrish, also the radio distorted communication was cool. I don't mind Jack and Rei being gay, heck I could tolerate Tom Cruise in Top Gun for the sake of the F14s... Wonder if battle fairy Yukikaze is a translater injoke.

Well the fansubs are fantastic but won't give us any new information. Any real suprises are bound to come from those books comics etc, who few of us have seen and read. I for one look forward to new fuel for our fan ramblings on all things Macross

Recently watched: Yukikaze: Nice aircraft action and great designs, the CGI is a bit dated now. Slow plot with little background info, which does not have to be a bad thing, but a lot of wtf moments in the plot (or lack thereoff) annoyed me. Why am I not surprised this was a gonzo production. Almost expected Jack to sing Watashi no Kare wa Pilot. Ghost in Shell 2 Innocence: Seemed interesting but the subs from the dvd version I had were a bit poor. Think I missed some essential bits of information here and there. Was rather similar to Bladerunner in some aspects. Air: Some plot changes were abrupt and much was left open to interpretation. But so cruel...

I'd like to see in range of 1/10 Pvc figures of the main characters of mostl Macross series. Preferably by one of the better producers like Maxfactory or Wave.

Amen to that. Heck, Freds own animated project Goldigger: Timeraft (OVA) is way better then Shadow Chronicles.

Looks like a woodlands paint scheme, interesting. Nice alternative to the hero mechs.

You raise a very interesting point. It is certainly true that the anime industry is catering heavily towards the otaku. I doubt the industry did it out of choice and more by necessity. As far as I know anime pretty much disappeared from prime time Japanese television in the late nineties. The networks had imposed stricter content regulations and program slots became more expensive. I’m not sure if this was the result of media scares linking some serial killer and sex offender cases to anime fans or if it was a normal social-economic development. Anyway with the TV market in a slump, the majority of the industry switched to the DVD format with merchandising to survive. (I’m aware that most of you already know this but I’ve added it for the sake of completeness.) My point here is that the industry was mainly reacting to circumstances and was not actively seeking this niche. At the end of the day the people that work in the industry are in it for a living. If catering to a minority target audience is the way to earn the most given the circumstances then you can’t really blame them. Without anime on prime time TV how are you going to bring it to the attention of the mainstream audience? Still the anime industry has survived many changes so I wouldn’t be surprised if things look completely different in a few years. Developments in ways of online distribution like the yahoo channels of Bandai and Kadokawa or Crunchy roll may bring about a return to mainstream. Same goes for Animax as a worldwide operating pure anime TV station. As an example of this change in the main demographic: the audience for anime/manga and related merchandise in my country is shifting more and more from young adult males to teenage boys and girls. Ironically this has only increased the demand for 'perv' material. Reaching a wider audience may be more a matter of distribution then controversial content/merchandise.

Selling licenses for any kind of merchandise is part of the core business for any anime producer these days. MacF is not even an extreme example. No one is forced to buy this type of merchandise. More sold means more profitable franchise and a bigger chance for sequels. I'm sure if Lucas and Disney didn't have a family friendly business image to protect they'd branch out in (semi)-erotic content as well.

It's from ATMOSS the Australian online trademark system. I've checked in which countries HG has trademarked Macross. If you play around with the Aussie system you can see that HG only ever copyrighted Robotech (altough that trademark has lapsed).

Unknown, the only thing we do know is that a potential Australian release can't be blocked or interfered with by HG. It doesn't mean there are no other factors that could prevent a release. Without direct acces to the US market an english sub/dub may just not be profitable. Who knows.

M7 was popular in Japan 15 years ago and back then it would have been a hot title to license. Today, it is most definitly not a guaranteed succes for a western release. As anime52k8 said, it will have a hard time competing with newer anime. This is not a time where licensing firms want to try risky titles. (CPM for example filed for bankruptcy a few days ago). If a Macross title is released in the West then the most likely candidate is Frontier HG has not trademarked Macross in Australia. There are no legal issues with a possible release of Frontier there.

When someone is not to happy with the mod style here, feel free to check out the Elitist Jerks forums(gaming). That's an example of how a real police-state forum is run. You may find the mods here to be a little more relaxed after that.