Radd

I disagree with the idea that technology changed too fast between the beginning of the Prequels, and A New Hope for many of the reasons already stated by others. The Republic was forcibly brought out of a period of stagnation and beauracracy from wich little advancement had been made in ages. At the same time, it was also a period of class and style over usability. Also, Luke is supposed to be 18 at the time of ANH, isn't he? That's nearly 20 years from the end of Episode III. How old was Anakin when Qui Gon and Obi-wan found him? We're looking at potentially 40+ years of time here, folks. That's not to say things are perfect in the land of Lucas, my major gripe is that ships like the Y-Wing should be in service around the time of Episode III. That they're not seems kinda odd, given how old they seem to be at the time of the OT. Of course, it's a huge galaxy, with many planets with their own armies and whatnot one would assume. I suppose it's not entirely beyond belief to think that the Y-Wings are in service, just not employed by those who take up the central role of the third movie. I guess it would just make the two trilogies mesh a whole lot better if we saw some ships from the OT in the prequels, especially those that are portrayed as being old by the time of Luke and company. Is this comment based on anything, or do I need to post the car photos again? As for the VF-19, it went into service during Macross 7, wich would make it's introduction 2046 at the very latest.

I loved the Senate scenes. They cut some out from Episode II because they thought it slowed the movie down too much, but included them as extras on the DVD. I thought they were great and wish they'd kept them in there. There's plenty to complain about when it comes to the prequels (I seriously think EpII would have been so much better just by removing the "love story" scenes), but I think some people have got it in their head that it's cool to bash them, so they'll leap at anything.

Get off it, I'm not such an animation snob that I refuse to watch anyuthing but movies and OVAs. There's plenty of teleivision series that I'm perfectly happy with them. I will agree as far as the Soundforce Valkyries, wich look a lot like post-movie G1 Transformers. However, that same show also gave us the VF-17, some much less tacky varients of the 19 including the excellent VF-19P, the VF-1C, a version of the VF-14, the VF-5000, the Full Armour V-11, the VF-22 and the VA-3, all of wich are great. Believe it, pal. Over on the BWTF.com forums ages ago, when Armada was still new and only the first wave had been released. The vast majority of the people there made those very claims. I believe at one point someone even brought up that the RiD car brothers did not have gas caps, and Hotshot did, so that was further 'proof' that Hotshot was the more realistic looking vehicle. With the 19 they claimed the visible screws made it look worse, and less realistic than Jetstorm. Well that, and the Brave shows are much better written than the newer TF shows. At least what I've seen of them.

Nah, the original G1 show had it's moments, but overall it wasn't that great. I cannot sit down and watch it with nearly the same anjoyment as I did so many years ago. Even in my teens, when they were showing the so-called Generation 2 version of the series (with the crappy CG cube and scene switches) I was dissapointed. However, take SDF Macross. I enjoyed Robotech when I was a kid. As I grew up, I started liking Robotech less and less, but still enjoyed it more than any other show I liked as a kid. Then I get SDF Macross, and I enjoy it far more than I ever enjoyed any of my childhood shows now or then. As for our parents enjoying toys, that really depends on whether or not they're inclined to like toys in the first place. Most people suffer from some degenerative mental illness that causes them to think all toys (and animation) are for kids only as they grow older.

I've been saying this very same thing about the design asthetic, minus the pictures, since Episode I. So many people always dismissed my car analogy, but there it is, in full colour!

Whenever someone says something like that, it seems like they're saying, "Well kids are stupid, they'll eat up any old crap that's tossed at them." Of course, a truly solid show, one that might be called a classic down the line, is one that appeals to kids, but also adults.

I don't know why you uploaded an HTML file to your post when you could have just pasted in a link right to the image. I dug it out of the HTML for ya. Here's the Gundam in question: http://www.1999hobbysearch.com/dbimages/us...g/10027748a.jpg

I will also reserve judgement on the show itself, however I will judge the animation that has been shown to me, as it is supposedly representative of that wich will appear in said show. Now tell me where exactly I said that. I've reread my post several times and I can't seem to find it. I did compare it to the 15 year old mentality of thinking robots look better the more guns you cram on them, and the brighter you make their colour schemes, though I am painfully aware that there are those well beyond 15 years of age who still cling to this ideal. I am even pessimistic enough to believe that I am in the minority of those to whom this asthetic does not appeal. These same people are often also fond of the Gundam Wing designs for wich I hold nothing but the utmost contempt. Just calling it like it is, though again I did state this was simply my opinion and that this particular asthetic does appeal to some. However, if I proclaimed Rob Leifeld's misproportioned scribblings and blatantly plagiarised designs to be what they are, there would be many who would disagree with me, and cry that it was simply my opinion. The fact of the matter is, just as it can be factually stated that Leifeld's proportions are in dire need of work, and Agent: America buys his costume from the Captain America fanclub, every toy from Armada, Energon, and now Galaxy Force have a distinct children's toy quality to them. Their vehicle designs do not look as futuristic, alien vehicles, so much as children's toys depicting such things as well as appealing to the asthetic I described above. I happen to think that asthetic looks cheap and immature. I shall not curb my opinion to avoid hurting the feelings of those who disagree with me. I do not expect them to do that either, and it is my experience that many of them will not hold back their opinions because someone who disagrees happens to post to the same board. I've held several arguments with Transformers fans who swore up and down that Armada Hotshot looked far more realistic than the car forms of the RiD and G1 toylines. Many of them have told me that Yamato's YF-19 looked like crap compared to the Jetstorm toy from Beast Machines.

Wouldn't call it a mystery peice. Although it's not mentioned in the instruction manual, this missile launcher is shown in the VB-6 line art in one of the VF-X2 game books. The legs still can lock in shuttle mode, you just gotta make sure that when they go on the tab you pull them back about 1-2mm. It's still not a very good lock though and they do fall off the tab quite easily. Yes, it probably would have made more sense and been more secure if the tab was facing backwards. Graham You mention in the review that the tab may have been assmebled backwards, and in the photo the piece does look seperate from the main body. Is it glued in, if so is there anyway to remove it and maybe stick it in the correct way?

The new shows have been completely devoid of anything I liked about the original G1 Transformers. To be fair, though, the original cartoon wasn't as great as many fans remember it being. While still enjoying the show, I felt distinctly dissapointed about many aspects that I did not recall as being quite so...well...crappy. The new shows seem to build on what I disliked about the original shows, while dropping those things that made me enjoy the show so much as a kid. I think Corey's comments about the designs are spot on, regardless of whether or not you're a G1 fan. The new designs just scream "munchkin", as if they were designed by a 15 year old that thinks any robot can be improved with garish colours and a generous helping of OMFGWTFGUNSEVERYWHERE!!!!!!!11111one The animation itself is brighter and more colourful, and while I suffer no delusions that the original cartoon had splendid animation (it was quite bad at times), what I've seen of each of the new shows seems to have had even worse motion. The cel animation from this new show looks to be no different. The CG isn't to stellar either. It looks like they tried to go for a blend between realistic CG and cel shaded CG and it just didn't come out right. It probably would have looked better if they dropped the 2D animation completely and went straight up realistic. Or dropped the realistic backgrounds entirely, and tried to mesh cel shaded CG and make it all flow together.

Meh. He suffers from the same problem almost every Transformers toy outside of the first run of G1 toys and the Alternators. Overdone, cheesy looking sci-fi alt mode. I mean, as an actual toy, he doesn't look too bad. Decent posability, nifty transformation and all. But he's just ugly. It's cool if the particular asthetic of the toy appeals to you, but I despise it for the same reason I love the Alternators and most of Kawamori's mecha designs. Even many of Kawamori's most futuristic designs look like something that could very well be made at some point in the not so distant future, as opposed to cheap, plastic crap.

Silent Bob, I think I just filled the cup.

I see the hands as a stylized dacking lattice. Zentrandude, how do you mean 'lose a gunship'? By that same logic, having a ship at all means you stand the risk of losing the ship to an enemy attack. During a typical transformation, the gunship is never far away from the mainship to suffer an attack that the mainship itself would be completely safe from. If they do lose the gunship somehow, they still have all the other weapons available to a New Macross battleship. The way I see it, there's more to gain by having multiple seperate gunships that dock with the mainship in a battle situation.

Depends on how important they were in my childhood. Some I might not remember right off the bat, though I have run into people from that far back and rocognized them, although I wouldn't have thought of them otherwise. I'm not buying any of that, "It was sooooooo traumatizing, she forgot all about it!" stuff, either. Using solar panels from around the city? Now that's a far better idea. An even better idea would to simply have some sort of release mechanism attached to the canister. Cripes, man, do you think the President of the United States has to activate a giant robot, who pole vaults across the Grand Canyon after trampling several U.S. cities to smash a canister, that unleashes some acide onto a vault, wich then opens up a solar sensitive panel to the light of day which THEN fires the nuclear missles?

No. Athena was among those she knew as a child and conviniently forgot. Deunan was told it was the Appleseed when she was given it. Far less contrived and impractical ways to release a virus might have made the end of the movie seem less contrived and impractical.

Hell! Let them call it G-Force! G-Force means nothing to me, and I have no desire to see a horribly butchered and rewritten Hollywood movie based on the horribly butchered and edited version of a Japanese series. I'd be upset if they tried to make it a Gatchaman movie, so the further it departs from Gatchaman, the happier I am.

I'm curious what plotholes you're referring to? I had no problems with plotholes, but then again, I'm familiar with the sotry. But both my wife, my friend and his wife understood it perfectly fine. The only thing I needed to explain to them were certain words and phrases which have specific meaning in the Appleseed universe. Ditto. What plot holes? I guess the only thing that could've bothered me was the large amount of characters but lack of development for them. But then again, I've read the manga so i guess I might be biased when I say they had ample development. And also Briareros wasn't that filled with angst. He's a funny sarcastic guy in the manga. You're both joking, right? Ok, ok, spoilers people, so if you don't want the movie ruined before you see it, read no further. Ok, so Deunan runs into several characters over the course of the series and ias asked if she knows them, to wich she responds no. Then later on, it turns out she did. She knew some of them quite well in fact, but this somehow just slipped her mind. And do not try to tell me that she was just a little girl when she knew them, I'm not buying that or any other bridge you're selling, that just does not fly given the circumstances shown in the movie. So, Deunan had the Appleseed the entire time. She's had it for years. She knew what it was. She knew what she was supposed to do with it. She was supposed to give it to a character that she happened to conviniently forget she knew. Not only that, but she forgot she had the Appleseed, even though at some point during the series she had to have placed it inside her father's gun, wich she also conviniently forgot had a secret compartment. Now, there's this virus up at the top of the main building in this utopian city. It has a virus that everyone is told will eliminate the bioroids, but in reality it will stop mankind's ability to reproduce, a rather low violence way of eliminating mankind and letting the bioroids take over. So then the only way to release this virus is to have 8 or 10 huge walking gun emplacements needlessly destroy the entire city and shoot the container at a distance of about 3 and a half feet (just to be certain they don't miss!). Not only that, but a character that's not in on this whole "wipe out mankind" trip the old men are on just happens to know exactly how to turn off the walking guns, wich involves manually entering the password (her name, no less!) into one specific walking gun, and it will turn off all the others. Now, by this point in the movie, I may have been distracted and shaking my head in disgust, but it seemed like said password finished entering itself when Deunan was unable to because the keyboard was broken, if this isn't the case there's still plenty wrong with the writing as-is. On top of that, I am certain I'm not covering all of the plot holes that made me cringe when watching the movie. Keep in mind, I wanted to love this movie, and was willing to forgive a lot.

I just thought I would point out that it is only called the "MAC II" in Robotech. It is never called that in SDF Macross or any Macross sequel. Also, Yamato's toy of the Monster was going to be 1/60 scale, not 1/100 as some others have already pointed out. Hence all the confusion in this thread.

Lucky! I nabbed a Grimlock over at Walmart late last night and I have to say he is quickly becoming one of my favourites. If it weren't for his very loose balljoint hips (why, oh why didn't they go with hip joints similar to Meister's?) he'd probably be at the top of my list. He has the nicest looking headsculpt since Silverstreak, one of the most imaginative transformation sequences, and he looks awesome in robot mode. Maybe at some point I'll stick some Elmer's or something into those ball joints to stiffen them up. My only other gripe is the instructions. They show almost the entire transformation from a side view, and that really doesn't tell you a whole lot for several key steps. Until i glanced at this thread I didn't realize the shoulders were supposed to fold out, but I was pretty certain his upper body was supposed to somehow snap into place. Now that I now I like the toy even better. Meister is still my favourite, but Grimlock is a close second, with Tracks in a slightly more distant third. All in all I am definitely enjoying the Alternators line so far. I just hope we get some better Decepticons eventually. Dead End is nice (But I'm still sore that we haven't gotten Sunstreaker.), but Ravage looks awful. I've got my hopes up that Swindle will be decent. Ok, looking back at the pictures, Shockwave looks mad cool.

Count me among those who plan to wait until a decent sticker set is out. Until then my Konig will have to settle for being only as awesome as it can manage without stickers, wich is still quite a bit of awesome.

Mmm, Battle 7. Absolutely love that ship. I'd love to see it get the Yamato treatment. I'd settle for the Battle 13, since it's more likely Yamato could get the rights to that.

Meh, I stick by my opinion. The visuals aren't terrible, but they're not great either, and the writing is just wretched. There are many simply unforgivable plotholes scattered throughout the movie. What makes it worse is that these plot holes are major points on which the entire story rests.

I had a version of Macross II on VHS that was the entire OVA cut together as a single movie. It had pretty much everything, just removing the opening and end credits, and the titles between episodes. I think most of the eyecatches were removed, leaving one of each (and I think there were only two eyecatches) in the entire movie. I've not seen the DVD, but I think it is safe to assume it's the same thing, all the episodes squished into a single movie, or even the different episodes all just on a single DVD. Manga does not have a good track record as far as quality, I think we all know how their Macross Plus ME DVD was their VHS master dumped to DVD with the subs hardcoded. I am not a huge fan of Macross II to begin with, and the additional fear of getting a low quality DVD via Manga has kept me from picking it up even just so I could have all of Macross on DVD. However, if anyone else has seen the DVD and can vouch that it does not have these problems, I might consider picking it up after all.

I agree. As much as I harp on the flaws in the visuals, it didn't look terrible and I would have been able to easily forgive anything I didn't like in the visuals if the story had been at least decent.

Awww... I hadn't heard anything about either show, but I was hoping Aquarion would feature retro looking variable fighters like those in Kawamori's Design Works book. Ah well.