Radd

I disliked Aquateen a lot when I first saw it. Of course, the early episodes weren't nearly as good as some that came later, and even then the show was hit or miss. Some of the shows are pure genius, like The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future. SeaLab, on the other hand, I liked instantly. However, since Murphy's voice actor died, it hasn't been nearly as good. Personally, I think the best things to come out of AS have been Harvey Birdman, and my personal favourite Venture Bros. Both I found to be consistently excellent.

ComiKaze suggests that Basara is not even trying to help as pilots are dying all around him, though in Basara's mind he is trying to help, in a way that he believes is more effective than killing. Basara believes that the enemy pilots are people, much like the VF-11 pilots. He believes if he can reach them on a more personal level, show them that the people of the M7 fleet are people and not some faceless "them", that he will be able to convince them to stop fighting. Now, in M7's world this is a bit of a stretch. For all you know the invading "aliens": might be machines programmed to destroy, with no personal level to appeal to. However the real world truths are there, it is more difficult to kill someone if you realize that they're not some faceless "them", that they're much like you. And it's even more difficult to hate them. This is especially true when an alternative to fighting is within reach. Now Basara's own unlimited idealism is tempered by the reality around him, and it takes characters like Ray and Max to help Basara along, but I think there's much to appreciate in the basic ideals that motivate Basara.

Wait, they're showing Pee-Wee's Playhouse on Adult Swim now? But yeah, AS has a lot of great shows, and a lot of really terrible shows. Overall, I like it, there's been some great stuff to come out of it.

It was the same studio but they are in Japan and not American based at all. They do all the Final Fantasy video game cut scenes. 414003[/snapback] So, the same studio in name, but none of the American staff that worked on the TSW and Animatrix then?

Now we're going in circles.

You know, I wonder. Was this the same studio that did FF:TSW and Flight of Osiris? As I recall that was an American studio based in Hawaii.

Yeah, don't take this the wrong way Mephistopheles and GutsAndCasca, but it does seem to me that you are both using supposition on how you think the Zentradi would act despite points to the contrary. As for the DYRL examples, well I was talking of SDF Macross in and of itself, since it's the official version of events. I agree with KingNoir. Had they captured the ship at the beginning....they would have left Earth alone and forgotten about it. Had theycaptured the ship away from Earth without the cultural contamination occuring....they would have left Earth alone and forgotten about it. It was fairly late in the series when they crossed that line which made Earth a target out of a percieved threat. The Zentradi were warriors, designed to wage war. I've no doubt war would be their first option to solve a problem, but I don't believe they would wage war if they did not percieve a threat. At least not until the Supervision Army was completely gone and they spent quite some time with nothing to do.

I personally loved it. Yes, it was very reminiscent of the first two films, but I liked the first two films. Superman hasn't had a decent silverscreen appearance since Superman II, and to me it seemed Superman Returns was a superb way to bring a direct continuation of that (ignoring Superman 3 and 4) to both the audience that remembers the old films, and a new audience altogether.

Oh, as for the 'pickles' analogy, if someone I knew didn't want pickles on their burger, I'd be fine with that. If they claimed, with complete seriousness, that pickles caused cancer, promoted weakness in children, and ruined all hamburgers everywhere simply by existing...well, then I'd question their grip on reality.

This is after we've caught their attention and had been fighting with them for a while...while, in fact, they were still only really interested in the ship. The ship was their primary interest, they ignored Earth the entire time they were chasing it, even though they had plenty of manpower to spare. Later events brought them to the decision to attack Earth. As for that planet, we've no idea on the specifics of the situation. It may have been a Supervision Army stronghold, that just happened to be a prime candidate to make an example of.

Yes, the same could be said of the Zentradi. The Zentradi were, after all, a warrior race whose sole purpose was to wage war. We don't know that. In fact, given what happened in SDF it seemed clear that the Zentradi were not interested in Earth or humans at all.

As I recall, the U.N. heads didn't even try to establish communications with the Zentradi, even when informed it was possible. They weren't even aware of the Zentradi's intentions, and didn't seem to care to find out. It's one thing to fight for defense, it's quite another to fight as a show of force without even attempting diplomacy.

I hope they put better writing into it, rather than cranking out sequels to a game the ending of which wrote out the possibility of sequels entirely.

One of the things that Macross has always had as a theme, and something I really appreciate, is that it shows that organizations are all just people. The U.N. Spacey has always been filled with really good people and the really rotten, not to mention the brave, the cowardly, the braggarts, the humble...all just people no matter what organization they were a part of. The same can be said of the Zentradi and Meltrandi. Macross 7 really keeps that intact. The U.N. Spacey are viewd as villains? Hardly, Max and Gamlin are both U.N. Spacey, and both shown in a rather positive light. Heck, Max is the benefactor behind Basara to begin with. And what about Ray? He's ex-military. As for the 19 and 22 not being a part of the whole "make peace, not war" thing...well I assume you mean Emerald Force in this context, why would they be a part of Basara's trip? That makes no sense. If everyone got behind Basara right at the beginning, that would hardly have been realistic character developement.

Didn't like Macross 7? Well, this is ground that hasn't been covered before. Still, bad animation? It's got more consistant animation than SDF Macross. The story is exactly like DYRL? I don't even know where to begin with that one, still, you do a decent enough job of pointing out the dissimilarities, even if you get some of the details wrong. As Keith pointed out, there was never any sound travelling through space. I don't know what you mean about "killing the image of the VF-19 and VF-22". The VF-11 I can see, they made it worthless in that show. Still, the 22 is shown in a much better light than the YF-21 ever was, and the 19 is the 19. It shows up, and proceeds to be bad ass, though I take it you don't care for the motivations behind the most prominent 19 pilot in the series. Still, I do agree that there are plenty of things to dislike in M7. The animation is lower quality than I'd like, even if it is overall better than the original tv series. I'd say they focused less on the action scenes, and more on making the character animation better. I also didn't like how they made the VF-11 so useless. The cannon fodders from SDF didn't have it that bad. I personally didn't care for the glamrock costumes and the glamrock look to the Sound Force mecha, though the mecha did fit what they were going for. I didn't care for most of the Protodevlin designs. I wish they could have put more quality into the reused battle footage. I mean, if it's going to be so blatantly recycled it ought to at least look good. Finally, I thought presentation could have, overall, been better. The designs I've already mentioned, but more importantly how spiritua was presented. I, for one, did not get anything "mystical" or "magical" out of spiritua, or how Basara affected the Protodevlin, but it seems a lot of people did. I chalk that up to the monster-like designs of the Protodevlin, and the flashing lights associated with music in the series. What I got out of it was that Basara had no "special powers", other than stubborn determination, skill at anything he put his mind to to master, and his untraditional idealism. Things that any one of us are capable of, if we truly want it enough. Now, the things I did like I found to be enough to make me view the series in more of a positive rather than negative light. I appreciate the themes of the show, and how Basara's limitless idealism is constantly tested by both the enemies and his own circle of friends and acquaintances. I thought the character developement in the series was it's strongest point. It was never cheesy or forced, and it was more complicated than what we've come to expect from Macross (ie: Mylene not simply "falling" for either one of the two male leads, and getting together with them in a nicely wrapped up package to end the series). There are plenty of designs I do appreciate from the show, such as the VF-17, the VF-19P, the VF-5000, the VA-3 Invader, the VF-14, the New Macross class ships, and a number of the military escort ships. I thought the police mecha were a nice touch, though I did miss the Destroids.

That sums up AC pretty well.

Huh? I don't really follow that line iof reasoning, unless you're suggesting that you only like Rated R horror movies and everything else is bland and boring?

Yeah, trailers are often like 5 minutes long and show a helluva lot more. Teasers barely show anything, are about a minute long, and tend to show more of the mundane stuff while only hinting at the meaty goodness.

So, is there an article or something that says Shoji Kawmori took matters into his own hands and went nuts, while the people who hired him looked on helplessly, unable to stop the carnage he was causing?

Really, both sides of this drawn out argument have their points. The first design really is more "true" to the original Starscream, and the Kawamori redesign presents a much, much improved jet mode, and it would seem a more posable robot mode. On one hand, I prefere the original prototype shown, mainly due to that robot mode looking more like a depiction of the G1 design. On the other, the better jet mode and better posability of the redesign strike me as the better toy. Still, I do agree with concerns on whether or not the arm guns will be perfect transformation, or popped off and reattached. Either way, I plan on picking this up, along with Skywarp and Thundercracker, assuming they don't ignore the possibility of easy money.

Kibble means different things depending on who is using the word. Some people will tell you that kibble is any part that hangs off of the humanoid form of a robot. Others will tell you kibble is any piece of a Transformer that is obviously recognizable as a part of their alternate mode. Many others can't seem to decide between these two definitions, and liberally sprinkle the word throughout any conversation on Transformers they happen to engage in. Look at how some consider both the wings hanging off his waist, and how SS's arms become part of the fighter mode to be "kibble". If from these statements we can gain an accurate definition of "kibble", then one can only assume that "kibble" is a generic term meaning "any part on any Transformer" because everything from the original G1 toys, to the Alternators and Masterpiece Convoy are made up of nothing but "kibble". Personally, I preferred the old prototype, with a more G1-looking robot mode, even if the fighter mode had to be compromised. However, this does not look bad, and the fighter mode is definitely much improved. I'm still looking forward to picking it up, along with Skywarp and Thundercracker.

What constitutes the "end" of a war? There are real world examples of a war "ending", yet the fighting continues. It could be that the major part of the war was over, the A.U.N.'s back was broken, their major lands occupied or having worked out treaties to the satisfaction of the U.N. Yet, small groups refuse to give up the fight, and continue to wage a guerilla war against the U.N., striking then dissapearing again. It's possible that SV-51 was developed in some part of the world that the U.N. had not yet stomped into the ground, or had been completed much earlier, but late enough that they could not be put into a combat role while the war was officially still on.

I just always assumed more was going on in the movie than we actually saw. Like other Autobots and Decepticons fighting in the city that never actually appear onscreen. At the very least, more was probably intended to be shown, but was cut due to time or budget restrictions. Case in point, one Decepticon who is never seen again does not equal an 'armada', when Unicron is recreating the injured Decepticons.

I recently heard that Ender's Game is currently planned to be animated. I wasn't able to find out if it would be 2D or 3D, but either way, animation would be a good move for such a movie. So many child characters, it would be pretty much impossible to get a decent performance out of even half the important characters. Of course, this could just be a rumour.

Ever since I started watching this show a few weeks ago, I've been hooked, It's my favourite anime since BLAME!. I'm only up to episode 4 or so now, but hopefully my life will calm down enough soon to let me catch up.