Radd

And just where are you going to get a better Alpha fighter toy for less? I see no other options for a toy that's readily available. I apologize, I see how my post was unclear, I was talking about the VF-1 MPCs when I was talking about 'better for less', as I paid far less than $80 for nearly all of my Bandai and Yamato Valkyries.

Disgusted seems an appropriate response. I just can't see how McDonald's remains so successful with places like Rally's, Wendy's, and other much better and cheaper burger joints available. Quizno's is ok, much better subs than Subway, and in some areas they're the best subs you can get. However, being from a town that loves it's food, I used to live in walking distance of several restraunts that blew Quizno's out of the water when it came to subs. Gah, times like this I wish I still lived in Buffalo.

Retconning? Well, sorta, in further attempting to merge DYRL? and tv series continuity, but making the past events sillier than they were? Not really that I could see. Other than that, I agree that what does well financially isn't always the geatest example of storytelling. There's plenty of box office hits that are just plain crap. And I won't beat your dead horse too much more, guys, I've had my say on 'spiritua' and it's place in the Macross universe, and that is what I got out of the show, on my own, as watching it. So I guess it goes to say, what about those that observe the horse, and the flies, and realize where the flies really come from and why they're hanging around the horse? Even though they saw the same thing as everyone else, they figured out what's really going on. What about those people that disagreed with Aristotle but nobody listened to?

If anyone who could do that, its Gonzo. They suck. Its like all the world's best animators and the worst screenplay writers are there. Disney's been doing it for years. Of course, now that they're stopping traditional animation altogether they're blaming it on us for not liking their recent string of craptacular movies.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. $30 seems like a fair and reasonable price for the MPC. Maybe a little less for the Alpha MPC since it's going to be smaller. I just don't get how Toynami or Harmony Gold expect these toys to sell at 80 bucks a pop when you can get better for less? I am looking forward to the Legios MPC, but even though it will be the only toy of it's kind currently available, I still won't pay 80 bucks for one. I'd be hard pressed to shell out that much for an MPC Tread. I'll wait and see if I can snag them at prices more like this, even if they're used and the box is all dinged up.

http://www.animeigo.com is your best bet.

I generally shake my head and sigh whenever some idjit shows off their fan made Transformerm but this is pretty freekin' sweet. I could seriously see this. I have to agree, though, it looks very feminine, which would not do for Blurr, but would be perfect for Arcee. There's actually an Arcee toy that's a motorcycle, in the Energon line. Doesn't look too shabby for an Energon toy, but this just blows it out of the water and would make an excellent Alternator's design.

Wait...so Voyager just did a dump of their VHS versions onto DVD with hard encoded subtitles? I thought they were doing this for the love? Man, my opinion of them is once again severely wavering with this news.

Galvatron was always chubby. He actually doesn't look too shabby in robot mode, still too fisher*price for my taste, though. His vehicle mode is just crap. I just do not understand the Energon/Armada design ethic.

Naruto is pretty much Dragonball Z for people that are "too cool" for DBZ. It's a tournament shonen, the story, characters, and whatnot are all pretty weak. There's some nifty characters and designs in there, don't get me wrong, but this is pulp, it's pop-anime, it is a guilty pleasure at best. There's tons of battles, and each episode they try and force feed you a moral. As mentioned, the animation level goes up and down. I would agree that it's paced better than DBZ, there does not seem to be anything even remotely close to DBZ's "Longest Hour". Out of the similar shonen shows popping up in fansub circles, I'd say there's much better shows like Hunter x Hunter and One Piece, that deserve far more credit than Naruto. As for the "Second Coming of Anime" I would direct you to 'Captain Herlock: Outside Legend the Endless Odyssey' or the (finally!) new Tenchi OVA. 'Galaxy Reailways' is so far an excellent series as well. The new Tetsuwan Atom (Astroboy) is absolutely incredible.

Lucky! I harbour much envy towards you! Congratulations, for the price that is a true steal.

Damn you people. I'm not typing this out again. To me, Macross Zero has the closest to what we could call 'magic' in a Macross show, and even there the jury is still out as it likely has more to do with the Protoculture's advanced technology and understanding than some mystical power. (Insert Arthur C. Clark quote here.) Ok, now about the VF-0 supposedly looking "more advanced" than the VF-1: Have I missed anything? I saw some great posts regarding these topics by other people, but I'll leave it to them to either quote themselves or type out their views yet again for the argument that refuses to die.

Sham, bam, bamina. http://www361.pair.com/harmon30/shows.php?show_id=12 Sockbaby Written by Doug TenNapel; Directed by Doug TenNapel and John Soares; Music by Justin Ridge; Cast Cody Spurluck, Uriel Padilla, John Soares, Doug TenNapel, Justin Spurluck, Ed Schofield, Kyle Santos, Louise Munose, Tony Spears, Joel Padilla, and Sonia Bettenlouht Animation by Mike Dietz Synospsis Ronnie Cordova and Burger defend Sockbaby from the evil Lord Optichord. Stuff What do you get when the creator of Earthworm Jim teams up with a bunch of talented locals in an attempt to create a no-budget Kung-Fu masterpiece? You get Sockbaby, which delivers on that promise in spades. This 3 episode internet series premiered Sunday, January 25th 2004 on Channel 101 and quickly caught on like wildfire across the net. The second episode, while delivering much more of what made the first episode so popular, did not fair as well on Channel 101 and wound up cancelled. However, the show had a strong enough fanbase that Doug and the Westhavenbrook crew have begun filming the 3rd and final chapter of Sockbaby, and there appears to be talk of a DVD release in the future. Links http://community-2.webtv.net/BattleJitni/WesthavenbrookNews/ http://www.tennapel.com/

Hello! I still rank TROOPS as my alltime favourite fan film, it just does not get any better, I really enjoyed Dead End, though, I still break it out to friends every now and again. Now on a slightly related note I have to start a thread about my alltime favourite no budget film series...

Me? I'm enjoying Macross Zero so far, as is everyone at my weekly anime night get together. The character developement doesn't seem to be as deep as some other Macross shows, the emphasis appearing to be on action for this outing. I can dig it, though. To show just how varying opinions are, I like it better than Macross II, and just about on par with Dynamite 7, but I enjoy it for completely different reasons than D7, and it shares many of the things I enjoyed about Plus, though with better action, but weaker character developement. Still, I like the characters well enough. They don't seem to be flat and uninteresting, as it seemed might be the case when watching the first half of the first episode. I'm glad Shin is more than a stoic, tragic emo boy, which I feared was all he would become. I can see where the people that are very heavily into character developement, romance, and all of that would be put off by how shallow it is in Zero as compared to SDF/DYRL?, and virtually non-existant next to Macross/Dynamite 7 (which had quite the opposite problem). Still, the action is top-notch, the animation is overall very nice. There's been animation that lacks in comparison to the rest of the OVA, but still it's never gotten anywhere near the level of animefiend, or the recycled battles from M7. Personally, I'm a little put off by the CG valkyries, but as far as CG goes I'm impressed, even if I still think the OVA would look far and away better if the Valkyries had been done with high quality cel animation. I look forward to the reas t of the OVA, and hope that it gets picked up by a good quality distribution company like Geneon or AnimEigo.

Surprise, surprise, and this is no April Fools joke. I was down at Software Etc. today to pick up a link cable for my spare GBA so my girlfriend could play Crystal Chronicals with me and some friends, and guess what they had? Nearly an entire set of used MPCs, the most expensive of which was $29.99 (for the YF-1R and the Fokker VF-1s), $15 for Rick's 1J, and a most surprising $9.99, yes $9.99, for Ben Dixon's VF-1A. I so wanted to pick up that Dixon, even if the MPC is as bad as the worst detractors say it is, 10 bucks is not bad for it. It even had all of the parts and everything, and looked to be in good shape, aside from a scratched up and bent box. Unfortunately, I'm hurting for cash right now, and will just barely be making rent this month. In about a month or two I should be doing just fine again, financially, and if those MPCs are there, I'm picking up Dixon at the very least.

I hope this is an April Fools joke, but sadly it is probably real. My gut instinct was to hit the "If the Gameplay is good" choice in the poll, but it only took one look at the website to know that this game has already lost a lot of what made KoF what it is. Interesting, well drawn character designs, replaced with crappy, generic looking CG models? I'll pass.

Well, I suppose it does look 'more' like him, but still. It's probably the make-up or the camera angle. If this image is legit, I can't say I'll feel very strongly either way about it, unless they have got Ian McDiarmid to play the part, then I think it will be an improvement.

I should clarify, the actual image quality of Palpatine in the top picture does look better than the original foot, but it doesn't look like Ian McDiarmid, and in that way it doesn't look better or worse than the original. It might just be that particular angle though. I hope that if they are tweaking the SE version even more that they at the very least get James Earl Jones to voice the altered dialogue from Empire. It just did not at all sound like Vader in the changed dialogue. Han shooting first and a better CG Jabba would also be appreciated, however unlikely that is to actually happen.

Looks interesting. Doesn't look any better or worse than the original footage, though. Doesn't really look like Ian McDiarmid as he looked in Return of the Jedi.

Probably, nostalgia is a powerful thing. Personally, the VF-1 is my second favourite Valkyrie (next to the VF-4 Lightning III), and I don't even know if it's because it's really such a great design, or just because it was the first. I mean, it definitely is a great design, but so are the YF-19, the VF-11, and many other Valkyries. It probably helps that I was always a huge fan of the F-14 and the F-15, and the VF-1 bares a strong resemblance to both.

If I understand you correctly, you are telling us that you believe jet engines are superior to nuclear engines. Macross Zero has the lowest technology level in the entire Macross franchise. That is why the VF-0 is a large, gangly, bulky patch together job, whereas the VF-1 is sleek and refined. However, the VF-0 gets better animation, because it shows up in a still being made high budget 5 episode OVA series, whereas the VF-1 showed up in low budget 80's tv series.

Well, that's great...if you don't have a computer. Still, as a videogame console, it just hasn't appealed to me yet. I would like to play Halo2, but I'm willing to wait until it's available for the PC. Crimson Skies 2 lost my interest the moment I heard it was an arcade style shooter like Rogue Squadron instead of a true flight sim style game like the original. Might be worth getting once it drops to 99 bucks, though.

VF-X takes place after Macross 7, correct? If so we can feel good knowing that these superior FAST packs replace the Macross 7 FAST packs.

I was a very picky and hard to please kid when it came to tv shows. I hated almost everything on tv. I would still watch tv, because that is what kids did in the 80's, whether or not they actually enjoyed it. I did have a fondness for giant robots back then, so Transformers and Robotech were my two favourite shows. Robotech, however, had much better story and character developement, which it had in spades over any other 80's cartoon series. Of course now I'm older and Robotech did not age as well as I would have liked. However, I did find out about the differences between the Japanese and American versions of the show back when Macross II came out, and fell in love with the show all over again when years later I sat down to watch AnimEigo's SDF Macross DVD box set. I've grown into someone that really appreciates character developement, political intrigue, and I also still have a fondness for giant robots, especially well thought out giant robots that aren't cheesy and cartoony.