Radd

I don't think it's pride over admitting Macross is better than Robotech or anything like that, I think it's pride over their past statements. They have claimed loudly, and frequently, that they own Macross. That they own the story rights, the designs, everything. It was the entire basis for preventing Yamato's Macross Plus toys from appearing in the States. They've since changed their claims to rest primarily on the trademark they somehow got, but they've never admitted that their ownership claims were completely bunk. Working with Big West would require such an admission. On top of it, there's probably so much bad blood between Big West and Harmony Gold that it would not be surprising if Big West refused any sort of cooperation even if HG started bending over backwards at this point. If HG's ownership claims have been complete nonsense all this time (as seems to be the case), then HG's actions have been nothing short of criminal. Extortion via the threat of lengthy and costly legal battles making the American market just not cost effective for BW to pursue.

Tim Burton can be hit or miss for me. I liked the last two movies I saw of his, though. Personally I thought Planet of the Apes was his lowest point and thought his Batman movies were overrated. He seems to do best with the dark fantasy stuff so I'm optimistic.

I've really never gotten that. The differences between the two are mostly skin-deep cosmetic changes. I don't see the DYRL Macross looking any less like a ship in cruiser mode than the SDF:M version. If anything, the changes to colour and details made the DYRL version look more like a battleship to me.

I'd love that biplane Decepticon done up in the colours of Roy Focker's air circus plane.

I would not have been disappointed if Yamato had shown off one the size of the old Takatoku/Matchbox Macross (1/1200 I think?). I would have been disappointed if they showed one off that was any smaller. As for the size they did show off, well....I've already set aside the money for it. If it is going to be $500 or so, however, I hope it's worth it. I don't think they need to make the transformation overly complex, the Macross never had a very complex transformation, but I'd love extras, like light up windows. I'd LOVE light up windows and running lights. That would be fantastic. Being able to see a bit of Macross City inside the leg windows would be superb, too. Hope we're able to move the gun turrets and that the ARMDs are detachable, too. (Future Daedalus and Prometheus release?) Not so interested in the tiny Valkyries. Afraid they'll get lost easily.

So...this isn't just a movie is it? I mean, sounds like it's debuting with a movie appearing in theatres, but the animation quality does not at all strike me as movie quality. It's not bad, but the character designs are really bland, little to no shading, little to no motion. The CG is...well...it's not bad. I guess. The battle scene at the end of the trailer was fantastic, but everything else was kinda meh. The ship designs are very bland. The huge fleet shots shoulda been awesome, I'm a sucker for those, but just felt flat. I just rewatched Endless Odyssey with a friend who'd never seen it, that was absolutely brilliant.

We're talking about panels at anime and comic cons. It's really not difficult to fill a panel at those cons. Not everyone goes just because they're a huge fan of whatever the panel is about. Certainly not everyone goes to the convention just because of one panel. I had a full room once for a panel I was giving a presentation for. Sure, the room was a quarter the size of the one from the above photo, but I'm also a nobody illustrator who's never been on the tv, and never produced a franchise that's known nationwide. I was just showing some people tricks on using Photoshop to colour drawings. I think it's fair to point out that nobody is saying that Robotech is a complete flop that no one's ever heard of, or no one has any interest in anymore. It's just not the huge deal HG makes it out to be. At least not anymore. There's a lot of old fans that are eager to hear something new. Probably not a lot of new fans. Robotech doesn't have nearly the popularity of Transformers or Evangelion or anything like that.

Are there actually people making complaints like that? The only complaints I've heard from old fans have been about the writing. And let's face it, that's not really Bethesda's strong point. Neither is animation, for that matter. Ouch, it's so sad because the graphics are so pretty.

I don't agree with this assumption. Yes, the DYRL we know and love was apparently moved into the official time line as a movie within the Macross world, but Kawamori's statement was that the "true" events of Space War 1 are "somewhere between DYRL and SDF:M." Making DYRL a movie within the series does not invalidate that statement at all.

I still don't think Bilrer was speaking literally, and that everyone is reading a bit much into nothing.

On the topic of Frontier, being a 25th Anniversary Send-up was pretty much the entire point of the series. The line between "homage" and "stealing" isn't nearly as fine as the op lets on. You can say that Frontier went overboard on the homages, you can tell me you didn't like the homages. That's fine. You can't tell me it was "outright stealing", or say that the series didn't bring anything new to the franchise. I gotta call that for the BS it is. There's certainly other things more worth complaining about as far as Frontier is concerned, but that's really for another thread. As for anime in general, hate to break it to you, but 90% of everything is crap. And even that's being generous. I do agree that there's a lot of overused anime cliches, then again I really can't say animation and comics from other parts of the world are really any better. I'd say just find the diamonds in the rough, and keep broad horizons, like others have already suggested. There's a lot of good stuff out there, it's just that there's a whole lot more crap. Now, to grab one point in the op's post, yeah sure there's a lot of angsty main characters. On the other hand, there's a lot of reasonably well balanced main characters who get labeled as "angsty" because they aren't happy and up-beat 100% of the time. For some reason anime fans in general tend to confuse conflict with angst more than anyone else. Now, as for one time period of anime being better or worse than another, also gotta call BS. People tend to remember both the best and the most popular (these two categories not necessarily overlapping, of course), and forget the...well...forgettable. The best of the best are always exceptions, in any time period.

My ex bought a new pin connector for her NES, made all our old games work first time, every time. No cleaning, blowing into the cartridges, or anything.

My only real complaints with The Pitt were that the story was so very short and unfullfilling, and that, aside from a couple small details, it didn't really look like Pittsburgh once you entered the city. I lived in Pittsburgh for five years, it looks like a city out of a videogame. I didn't recognize market square at all, it looked too generic-urban-city. The real thing looks like someone dropped a small town into the middle of the city, with a huge glass castle in the background. The contrast always made me think of FF7. Kind of a let down after crossing the bridge into the city. Not saying I expected an exact replica of the city, just that it felt kinda like it would if the Capitol Building in DC was replaced with a generic office building, yanno?

I'll probably nab them, but I'm more looking forward to New Vegas.

And I love that the designs look like reasonable precursors to the original movies' designs, which were by far my favourite Trek ship designs. I haven't really liked the aesthetic of Next Gen and beyond ships, but love these.

I haven't actually read the comic, but it sounds like it fills in a couple of the plot holes, like how there could be a single star going nova that threatens the entire galaxy. I mean, sure, hollywood science and all, but there's limits to how far you can stretch believability.

This is one instance where this prologue comic really detracts from the movie. The impression I got from the film was that the only reason Nero's ship so easily handed the Federation its collective rear ends was because it was from the future. So, we see this huge, massive Romulan super ship...and then it turned out to be nothing more than a mining ship. That was a pretty nice twist. But noooo. Instead it really is filled with top of the line, experimental Romulan weaponry. Being 200 years more advanced simply wasn't good enough.

I liked the old Trek movies best for the warp shots. It always looked so stylish. Never understood why they made warp look so dull Next Gen onward.

There were things I loved about the directing in this movie, and things that I hated. I did love a lot about the space scenes. That scene you mention, Pete, was my favourite shot in the movie. The only thing I did not like about the space scenes was that everything went by way too fast. It's like the director did not believe in a little thing called "establishing shots" You never get a really, really good look at the Enterprise. There's one full shot of it with nothing else going on to distract as the crew is heading up, but it goes by really quick. They did some great stuff with the space scenes, I just felt that they didn't really let the viewer have time to appreciate much of it.

Shoulder pads were big in the 80's. Seriously doubt there's any Robotech reference here, especially because there were no shoulder pads even remotely like that in Robotech.

I dunno, the guy lost all credibility when he listed First Contact as one of the best Trek films. Sure, Shakespeare the new film ain't, but let's be real, folks, the old movies weren't either. The last decade or so has not been kind to the Trek franchise. Voyager, Enterprise, and the Next Gen movies were all varying levels of horrible. The old movies had their ups (ST2) and downs (ST5). This new movie certainly has its holes, and a lot of them, though not quite as many as MC Burton seems upset by. That even discounting holes filled in by the prequel comic (terrible idea, by the way, making a comic prequel required reading). This new Trek might not be as good as Roddenberry Trek, but it's pretty much head and shoulders over the Burman and Braga Trek.

It's not a terrible loss, but I do miss it. Being able to store stuff in the missle pods was just convenient.

The under the wing missile pods?

I agree. It seems to be one of the most solid Yamato toys to date. Nothing seems as though it would be prone to breaking, but best to give it some time before declaring it to be entirely problem free. We're still putting them through the initial paces. I don't know. Yamato seems to have been steadily improving with time, with only the general QC of the Zero line and the shoulder hinge issue of the early 1/60v2 toys standing out as missteps. I can't recall any glaring issues with the YF-21. It's got a more complex transformation, making it more difficult to simply pick up and play with as compared to the VF-11. My 1/60 Tomahawk is a beautiful toy And aside from the shoulder hinge thing, people have been pretty enamoured with the new 1/60 VF-1 line. Still, the VF-11 seems very refined. It looks great in all modes, and at the same time it's easy to transform. Of course, the VF-11 transformation isn't that complex to begin with. It was probably a lot easier to design this toy than the 19 or 21.

If it is a mecha by mecha deal, I doubt we'll see a VF-17 from either Yamato or Bandai. Bandai would not want Yamato releasing a VF-17, as they will likely release a VF-171. And Bandai is likely to concentrate on Frontier with the larger toys.