Bri

Most of the newer of anime get licensed in the development stage (from David Williams, ADV). Given that Bandai Visual has done the Japanese release of Zero, M7 and Frontier it is quite possible that they also have the international rights to these series. So if we assume for the sake of argument that these series are licensed, why aren't they released? Mecha is not popular among the younger anime audiences. M7 and Zero are not guaranteed hits, not even among mecha fans. Frontier might have a better chance ude to its popularity however: it might be very expensive due to music rights, not sure how that works for an anime that may have been licensed already (we really don't know, Gububa and myself had a discussion about that some days ago in an other thread). the Macross trademark is in the way of a US release, renaming it might be to much hassle. Personally I have hopes for a UK release when the HG trademark drops but who knows. Alternatively Australia is an option if the trademark is a problem.

Put in some overtime and get all three

Yup, the engines are in the feet, they are quite compact. As for the town. I feel the TV series gives the more interesting representation of the city. Multi layered plateaus, in some episodes they show at least 5 layers for the city. Which can be moved or rotated during transformation. I kind of imagined this to work like some upscaled luxaflex system. People salvage whatever they can from the folded island to build a city is a quite clever way of explaining the origin of the city aboard the ship. There is probably quite a bit of anime magic involved. I doubt the original designer expected the 10 year olds watching the show to take it so serious later in life and do actual calculations. To make it work the easiest way to cheat would to enlarge the Macross a bit to allow for everything shown. Still if you were to take thing to way too serious and tried to engineer everything in a cross section drawing, I'm sure you could get a long way if you allow the city to extend bewond the legs. Things like the park and the stadium would be a tighter fit and the ceilings would be lower but for the most part it could work.

Watched the first four episodes. Pretty good sofar, nice mix of Gurren Lagan and French Sci-Fi noir. Love the way they are taking the piss with the standard shonen story. Wonder how they managed to convince Nike to go along with this, heh.

Ewilen's post on the DYRL rights. Probably the most detailed one on the current boards: DYRL rights

A thread on toy news. Forum members can post links to relevant information. No discussions, just an collection of links to info on latest toys. Scoopda thread

In short the idea was to split the license information part from the RT/HG thread. So people who want info on the legal status on the Macross license can read up on what we know/is confirmed without having to wade through 125+ pages of RT/HG bashing. Lonewolf set up a first post for a short (hopefully) pinned and locked thread with just facts about the legal status of the Macross licenses. A suggestion would be to treat it like the Scoop thread. Only news with propper references and no discussions. This would of course need mod approval/support but nothing tried, is nothing gained. -edit: Gubaba beat me to it, we both jumped in on Roy Fockers question

Tbh if so much of the original information is in the archives then we should start digging. Wonder if it's possible to reactivate that thread?

hmm, I'm not sure. There were quite a few posts early on in this thread by people like Radd, the white drew cary and Ewilen who dug up info on the lawsuit, the HG crackdown on e-tailers etc. Also some contacts with industry people were mentioned. I'm sure there could still be some usefull bits floating around.

Yea, it's a very nice start. Hopefully we can extract all the usefull info from the current thread in a few pages.

Would it be possible to split this topic at some point in say, the License debate and a Robotech thread? This thread is one of the few online resources that has any, more or less, decent information about the legal situation around the Macross license. It gets annoying having to wade through pages and pages of discussions about the inner workings and politics of Robotech.com, HG and it's employees. I'm sure that people have fair reasons for their gripes with HG and have as much a right to discuss those in a thread. However it makes reading up on the license debate very tedious.

Fair enough, I guess we can't really confirm if it's the music rights or the legal issue that prevent a release outside of Japan. There is just not enough info to work with.

hmm, from ANN, ( and this is just a quick comparison) Victor has done the music production for Gundam projects like Seed and 00 and also on ./hack and Planetes Not sure if that says anything but they have worked together before.

But are the music rights relevant in Frontiers case? Normally in an anime production the rights are owned by the production committee. If Bandai (Visual) got the distribution rights for Japan, why not the international ones? It's not like the 90s where a western firm had to buy a license, now the Japanese companies can keep pretty much everything in house. As a comparison: K-On has 2 top 10 hits now (I'm assuming the Oricon singles charts are mainstream not anime?) if this series get licensed, can we then make assumptions about Macross?

Other then interfering with a possible DVD release I don't think the impact of HG on Macross is that big anyway. Merchandise? Most anime merchandise is purchased via the internet straight out of Japan anyway, this even goes for more popular franchises like Gundam and Evangelion. I would imagine that companies like HLJ and Overdrive are quite happy with HG hurting US importers. Regarding the DVD release: I keep hearing this story of the Macross licenses being so expensive due to music licensing. But isn't that only relevant for Macross 7 which used an existing rock band? How far would this affect Zero and Frontier? Bandai visual released Frontier, would it not be likely that they would handle the western releases via one of their subsidiaries? On that note, it will be interesting to see when the UK Macross trademark of HG runs out in July 2009. I'm sort of hoping for a European release of Frontier DVDs after that date, possebly by Beez (Bandai).

Anyone who wants to wants to be seens as an owner of a Porsche and doesn't care about it's actual looks. It's a business statement. Think this sort of car can be a hit now SUVs are out of grace. A bit sporty and somewhere between a real 4-door sedan and a stationwagon.

Hmm, the Panamera Turbo is pretty ugly, but compared to the competition: the Merc CLS, Audi A7 and the AM Rapide it's not the worst of the bunch. A car for the 50+ year old who needs a executive car but deep down wants a sports car.

I use mainly Vallejo and sometimes Citadel paints. Started on games workshop miniatures but stayed with my paints when I started to build Gundam and Macross kits.

Doubt it has anything to do with cultural differences and more with World War 2 sensitivities. I doubt many networks would have been overjoyed with a show that was named after an enemy warship that was destroyed while performing a suicide mission. The ship as a heroic character is not uncommon in the West look at Star Trek or Star Wars, the Enterprise and Millenium Falcon being household names.

The division between east and west in terms of robots in popular media seems rather artificial to me. Artificial life and the fear of being replaced or controlled by your own creation are themes that are popular since the dawn of the industrial revolution. These themes can be found in the whole industrialised world. So evil robots from Japan or America draw from the same source. As for piloted mecha: As mentioned before in this thread sentient robots in Japan were similar in the 50s and 60s to superheros in America. A kids power fantasy, the superhero or robot would take on the bad guys and the child was the side kick. The ultimate rolemodel/big brother fantasy. I guess the visual variation is mainly due to local influences to what people can accept in terms of realism. At some point during the 60s/70s the focus shifted from role models to the child themselves becoming the hero. In Japan the lead became the pilot of a non sentient mecha, in the US the kid became Spiderman and co. Same concepts, different visualisation.

How did they react to hearing about MW? Curious to see if they have an interest in the international fanbase of Macross.

K-ON!'s Don't say lazy(ED) and Cagayake! GIRLS (OP) have reached first and second place in the Oricon singles chart.

Yea, the Tsukkomi classifaction is a better description, given their duo acts with the "rebel" of the show. However it requires even more background info. I did not know about the terms till I did some reading up on non mecha anime genres a while back. Tsundere, moe etc all those terms seem to be facing some major dillution in anime discussions. I guess any female character (and some males) gets called Tsundere when they are antagonistic but have a kind side even when they are not "real" tsunderes. Air and Clannad are next on my list of shows to watch, Kyoani still has a 100% succes score with me.

Think about Monaco. A micro state in Europe. 2 square miles and over 50,000 people live there during the summer. Monaco is also very luxurious/spacious, so the 3/4 square mile ( or more) inside the Macross isn't that weird.

Still Buck Rogers had Erin Gray, which is totally off topic, but makes up for all flaws in the series.