Einherjar Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 No one can be told what the protoculture matrix is. Even Shadow Chronicles didn't bother to show it. Have they even showed the Protoculture Matrix at all before? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VF5SS Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 It's plants that make the shaping happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
areaseven Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 You were able to watch RT II, wow, you have patience. Between the bad music and Anime, I just couldn't do it!! Of all the bad animated titles I've seen, Sentinels is by far the worst. It makes a root canal feel like a foot massage. It makes Battlefield Earth look like The Godfather Part I. Hell, it even makes Brokeback Mountain and The Crying Game go straight. That's how piss-poor Sentinels is. And to believe that there are people out there who actually enjoy it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jasonc Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 I forgot that some who hated Shadow Chonicles left or were banned from the site due to being unruly. That's probably why a lot of people there like SC. QFT, I was one of them. I never really blasted the show itself, but because I was a moderator on their site, and wasn't all fanboyish about their new product. I was basically demoted, then eventually banned (banned later because I was demoted over some B.S. they wanted to create). Anyways, if you ever read through their website, you'll find areas where Kevin McKeever will always try to paint some rosie picture about how it's just a couple of people that don't like RTSC. Of course, coming from a company voice, that information is about as trustworthy as a conman. It's pretty funny to see how there's no real opposition on their boards...Basically, those that didn't like the new face of Robotech are gone. I don't doubt that there's plenty of fans for the Shadow Chronicles. Many are either fans who are uber fanboys/fangirls and will like anything with a Robotech lable, and others just don't know that there's options out there that are better than what HG has given. Then, there are just normal people who like it just for the fact that it does carry some nostalgia to it, and honestly believe that it's a decent show. I don't doubt the last group, but the first two seem to have a form of blinder on. As far as the predicament presented here, I'd say that the best way to get around wanting to see new Mospeada mecha and stuff, without having to buy into a product you don't necessarily think is worth it, is bittorrent! LOL.. If there was a good product they made, I'd buy it, but up till now, RTSC has only enforced my belief that the current path HG is taking with their franchise isn't something that interest me. I still frequent the site because of friends, and will always be a fan of the original 85 episodes, Sentinels, and even the Robotech Movie from '86 for nostalgia purposes, but what is out as of currently is garbage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Yeah, but wouldn't you say your opinion is colored a bit by the fact that Tom Bateman was your roommate? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VF5SS Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Tom Bateman does have smelly feet. It's the kind of smell that hangs around after many a year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einherjar Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 It's pretty funny to see how there's no real opposition on their boards...Basically, those that didn't like the new face of Robotech are gone. I don't doubt that there's plenty of fans for the Shadow Chronicles. Many are either fans who are uber fanboys/fangirls and will like anything with a Robotech lable, and others just don't know that there's options out there that are better than what HG has given. Then, there are just normal people who like it just for the fact that it does carry some nostalgia to it, and honestly believe that it's a decent show. I don't doubt the last group, but the first two seem to have a form of blinder on. I had the same feeling after hearing the enthusiasm people had for the post-Shadow Chronicles Robotech. They'd probably be willing to wait years for new Robotech stuff if they haven't started already. It's kind of sad that they're being taken advantage of in a way just like others before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 It's kind of sad that they're being taken advantage of in a way just like others before. How? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jasonc Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 (edited) Yeah, but wouldn't you say your opinion is colored a bit by the fact that Tom Bateman was your roommate? Simply put, no, I wouldn't. If there's one thing Tom kept to himself about, it was his work at HG, and his opinions/differences with the direction they were taking the franchise. I can't speak for you, but I don't have my opinions easily swayed by others. It's the reason why I've always been vocal about my likes/dislikes about certain subjects, well before Tom Bateman was my roommate. While your assumption is interesting, it's focused down an empty hole. Edited March 3, 2009 by Jasonc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 If there's one thing Tom kept to himself about, it was his work at HG, and his opinions/differences with the direction they were taking the franchise. Well, I must have a different recollection of things, because I was in your apartment, watching Shadow Chronicles with you and Tom, and both of you were expressing your opinions pretty strongly about it. I guess we all see things differently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VF5SS Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 From a certain point of view, Vader killed Anakin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jasonc Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 I criticized Tom Bateman many times. Roommate or not, he was still associated with RTSC. Having the same opinion as someone doesn't necessitate having a "colored opinion", nor does it change the validity of what I say. Well, I must have a different recollection of things, because I was in your apartment, watching Shadow Chronicles with you and Tom, and both of you were expressing your opinions pretty strongly about it. I guess we all see things differently. You can say that again. I never had an apartment back then. BTW, how many times did you come over? If it was only a couple times, I'd say you don't know the whole story, or even a fraction of it. Nevertheless, this conversation doesn't address the topic. As far as how to handle being upset and feeling ripped off, it's simply a show. Not everything is gonna be peachy in every franchise. Even Macross has it's quircks that aren't so great. Hopefully the next installment of Robotech won't be so disastrous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taksraven Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 I suspect that we were being baited with this thread...... Taksraven Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 You're right, it wasn't an apartment, it was a house, with a well-manicured lawn. I was there in the summer of 2006, a couple of days after San Diego Comic Con. I had dinner with Tom and he brought me back to the house where I met you and your then-fiancee, and he showed me about 2/3 of Shadow Chronicles. But the two of you were saying exactly the same negative things about it, I mean exactly. It was like hearing them in stereo, which made me wonder which one of you thought of the words first and which one was just parroting them. And then when I weighed in with my comments, which weren't negative, the two of you seemed annoyed at me. It was odd, to say the least. So that's where my assessment came from. Tom's not too reserved about his opinions on Shadow Chronicles and Harmony Gold these days. Doug Bendo interviewed him for his podcast recently, you should check it out (if you can get past the gurgling audio). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jasonc Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Well, like I said, there's nothing wrong with agreeing with someone, nor does it invalidate what I've said. I can probably point to about half a dozen people here who have the exact same opinions. It's not as if they're uncommon sentiments regarding Shadow Chronicles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gubaba Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Doug Bendo interviewed him for his podcast recently, you should check it out (if you can get past the gurgling audio). Gurgling audio isn't the problem...Doug Bendo himself is the problem. He spends almost four hours talking to Tom Bateman, peppering him with questions he's in no position to answer, only to wind it up by calling him a loser for liking Frontier. Classy. Real classy. (That said, there were some good moments in that one...unlike most of Mr. Bendo's rants.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Tom Bateman does have smelly feet. It's the kind of smell that hangs around after many a year. Wasn't 'Bateman' the name of the main character in the novel/movie American Psycho? Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taksraven Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Wasn't 'Bateman' the name of the main character in the novel/movie American Psycho? Graham Yep. Patrick Bateman. Taksraven Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EXO Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Wow... there were two guys in the same room agreeing that Shadow Chronicles sucked? Say it isn't so... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Save Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 (edited) Somebody being a roommate would not constitute people having the same or no other opinion. That rationale would have me believe that family members that work together would do the same thing. All you guys play nice. In 2005 I saw about 35 min of SC animatics in a hotel room next to anime expo. The unnamed who showed me still loves and supports RT to this day and no matter what I've said many times most of the times he agreed and some times in the past he even asked me to post his views as my own to keep him out of retaliations way he still spends most of his time supporting RT. Even he knows it had problems but kept a very tight lip, but that was what two years ago so even what I'm replying with is pointless text. SC could have been worse watch the Death of Superman now that was bad. I listened to that podcast too it was mostly about inner office rivalry and not really about Harmony Gold. Edited March 3, 2009 by Save Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
areaseven Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 (edited) Tom Bateman is such a liar. At the 2004 MW Con, he brought a bootleg DVD copy of Yukikaze episode 4 and claimed that TSC would have the exact same animation style - mainly because the animation production was outsourced to DR Movie in South Korea. And Kevin McKeever is a racist pig. On the old forums, he made a racist comment towards me during a discussion on RT. Edited March 3, 2009 by areaseven Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowlightman Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 While Shadow Chronicles' animation is laughably bad, I would have been okay with it if the designs didn't suck and there was something resembling a decent plot. That said, it still could have been a lot worse. And I managed to make it through proportionally more of Shadow Chronicles (50%) than I did with Frontier (30%). Not to mention that hating on a guy like Tom is pretty tacky, especially considering some of the "winners" chiming in with their hate for the guy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EXO Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Tom Bateman is such a liar. At the 2004 MW Con, he brought a bootleg DVD copy of Yukikaze episode 4 and claimed that TSC would have the exact same animation style - mainly because the animation production was outsourced to DR Movie in South Korea. that wouldn't make him a liar. Maybe gullible. It'd be different if he had a copy of RTSC already and pretended that that was still the case. Tom Bateman is one of the nicest guys I've met. I'm sure that that's irrelevant to the topic. But since he's not here to defend himself, I just wanted to let that be known. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RavenHawk Posted March 3, 2009 Author Share Posted March 3, 2009 Look on the bright side - at least Shadow Chronicles was more tolerable than Robotech II: The Sentinels. Even that's debatable... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
areaseven Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Even that's debatable... How so? They're both half-assed, but Sentinels may potentially cause blindness due to its horrid artwork and animation. At least TSC is watchable in terms of visuals. Still rubbish, but watchable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RavenHawk Posted March 3, 2009 Author Share Posted March 3, 2009 Wow, I start a topic yesterday, make one or two replies, then go home, don't go online last night, come in today... and wow, this conversation got ugly! Ok, to reply to a couple things I saw up above: Roger, not sure if you were trying to be insulting towards me (with the assuming I was 13 comment) or were just joking around. I'm going to assume it was all just good-natured joking around, since I'm pretty sure I've never given you any reason, in this thread or others, to have any animosity towards me. I do still have very fond nostalgic feelings for Robotech, based on my memories of watching it many years ago as a kid, and still enjoying it more recently rewatching it with my son, and maybe that makes me childish, but I don't think so. As for the comments on Ted McKeever and Tom Bateman, well, I don't know any of these guys. Could be the nicest guys in the world, or the worst. Could be absolutely brilliant at their jobs, or just skating by on other people's coattails. I honestly don't know. The only one I can speak to at all is Tommy Yune, and, again, don't know the guy, never spoken to him, I can only judge him in regards to his abilities in what he has attached his name to. I like his artwork just fine, but, if memory serves, he is listed as a co-writer on Shadow Chronicles, and as director. The writing and direction of Shadow Chronicles are the elements where I think it comes across horribly amateurish (the CG, I suspect, is so bad because corners were probably cut to keep costs low... someone commented above that CG is always bad, but I know that in some new shows, like Viper's Creed and Rideback, I think it is blended in very well and isn't jarring in the least), so, from that point of view, I think one can criticize his work. Not him, but his work. I know that this thread has gotten off track. It was meant to be both a little bit humorous (looks like I failed there) and a little bit of venting as to my disappointment at this, the closest thing to new material that can feed my love of MOSPEADA, as well as some frustration that I even like the new MOSPEADA-esque mecha, just can't stand the new material that it comes from. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RavenHawk Posted March 3, 2009 Author Share Posted March 3, 2009 How so? They're both half-assed, but Sentinels may potentially cause blindness due to its horrid artwork and animation. At least TSC is watchable in terms of visuals. Still rubbish, but watchable. I think it's all about the connotations we have with something. Maybe if I rewatched Sentinels today, I would think it was terrible. On the other hand, I read the Sentinels novels when I was 11 or 12 and loved them, read through Robotech Art 3 around the same time and liked it. When I saw Sentinels on VHS way back when, it was sort of an embodiment of those earlier things, so that's the connotation it has in my mind, which is a lot warmer (and more nostalgic, I suppose) than Shadow Chronicles has. Another factor, for me at least, was that Sentinels was made over 20 years ago, and even at that what we see of Sentinels is trying to piece together separate bits of animation and story, intended for different episodes, into a vague semblance of a movie. Shadow Chronicles, on the other hand, should have benefitted from 20+ years of advancements in animation and, frankly, in the craft of storytelling for intelligent animation fans, in addition to being made as a single movie, and not haphazardly pieced together, and yet it still falls short. Sentinels probably is worse, but somehow I don't resent it for its shortcomings nearly as much as I do Shadow Chronicles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sketchley Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 I can agree with that. For all it's flaws, the animated Sentinals is the result of a salvage operation on a TV series that was never completed. SC never had that excuse (or acknowledged flaw). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jasonc Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Tom Bateman is such a liar. At the 2004 MW Con, he brought a bootleg DVD copy of Yukikaze episode 4 and claimed that TSC would have the exact same animation style - mainly because the animation production was outsourced to DR Movie in South Korea. I wouldn't call Tom a liar. Given that we all (including Tom) were told that the same animators of Yukikaze were doing RTSC, and Tommy Yune was saying it would have a Yukikaze look, it seems more like Tom was just misinformed from his co-workers. That wouldn't be his fault. There was never any false pretense he gave in regards to RTSC. Yukikaze was the style they were going for. I know this much... Tom was told that that information, and given the limited amount of information, one would assume that your co-workers were telling the truth. Who would've known that the decision to make it strictly a Korean animated film and cut out the Japanese would hurt the production quality. Also, it does seem there was no good oversight on any production work, as there are several flaws that can be pointed out. I'm sure by the time HG actually got to see them, it was too late to make any changes. RTSC was already outdated the second it was released. And while there are some good elements in it (voice acting was good, music was nice) those things got downgraded by all the other elements that damaged the movie. Isn't there a thread about this already on here somewhere? It's probably an old thread from a couple years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einherjar Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 How? I heard about the stories with Darkwater and Robotech Master from Space Station Liberty. After reading this thread, maybe Tom Bateman could also count with the Shadow Chronicles situation. A fan working on a film trying to build anticipation for the franchise and backfiring on both sides of the production. Everything is good as long as he did and said good things for it in public. Nowadays, the same could be true with close fans like whoever runs robotechx.com if you ask some people. Plus, the history behind Palladium and Toynami Robotech releases up to now, who at the moment are keeping the franchise alive outside of syndication and DVDs. These could be used to drum up anticipation for at least 2 new Robotech productions coming out in the foreseeable future (2010-∞). I might be confusing all of this with PR, but it's still sad. As for the MOSPEADA problem, think of the Robotech version as someone's gross reinterpretation of everything one loves: a legitimate fanfic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 I heard about the stories with Darkwater and Robotech Master from Space Station Liberty.Oh, please. Darkwater posted an "April Fool's Joke" of Harmony Gold's building on fire, something the people working there didn't appreciate, and when Robotech Master and I brought it up to him a couple of years after the fact, he still didn't seem to understand that this could be upsetting to someone. Put yourself in Harmony Gold's shoes, how would you treat Darkwater after something like this? ("I would throw a pie in his face" is not an acceptable answer. ;p) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VF5SS Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 If Palladium is keeping something alive, better get the shovel ready. Seriously, who even plays that crap? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 (edited) If Palladium is keeping something alive, better get the shovel ready. Seriously, who even plays that crap? Dude, you just invited me to play with you via chat yesterday. Liar. Edited March 3, 2009 by Roger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einherjar Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 (edited) Oh, please. Darkwater posted an "April Fool's Joke" of Harmony Gold's building on fire, something the people working there didn't appreciate, and when Robotech Master and I brought it up to him a couple of years after the fact, he still didn't seem to understand that this could be upsetting to someone. Put yourself in Harmony Gold's shoes, how would you treat Darkwater after something like this? ("I would throw a pie in his face" is not an acceptable answer. ;p) It's still a sad story all for a show, whoever starts it. I'm not defending them, I'm just indifferent about all of it. Edited March 3, 2009 by Einherjar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RavenHawk Posted March 3, 2009 Author Share Posted March 3, 2009 Oh, please. Darkwater posted an "April Fool's Joke" of Harmony Gold's building on fire, something the people working there didn't appreciate, and when Robotech Master and I brought it up to him a couple of years after the fact, he still didn't seem to understand that this could be upsetting to someone. Put yourself in Harmony Gold's shoes, how would you treat Darkwater after something like this? ("I would throw a pie in his face" is not an acceptable answer. ;p) That wasn't done by Harmony Gold themselves? I remember when Robotech.com used to post an April Fool's joke on their site every year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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