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Robotech Academy - You want a new Robotech series...?


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I fixed.

I agree with most of that.

What would be smart, is to clear staff, and then have HG either sell off the rights to someone that can actually do something with it, or fly to Japan and work out a deal that see's Macross as a worldwide release with HG as minority partners. HG could sell Arcadia and Bandai products and vids and everyone would be happy. HG could have seperately designed RT boxes for their Valks if they wanted, so the RT fans would be happy.

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The problem lies in BW having no incentive to work with HG and they have no relationship with HG, just with Tats... Who they hate. There is no way for HG to resolve this and Tats is the only company that can destroy robotech. So HG will do as Tats desires.

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Here is an idea: Support Mospeada for an entry in a Super Robot Wars game, have Tats and BW work together on something basic, both of them benefit, slowly they reduce their hate over time, and once they do then have them negotiate with HG and the like. It might be a silly idea but it is better than nothing.

Edited by DuelGundam2099
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I think that right now, many of us would like to be a fly on the wall of Frank Agrama's office.

I would really love to know what he thinks of this whole thing.

While he must surely have known that the RT franchise was not as popular as it once was, the failure of this KS must cement in his mind that his once mighty franchise is not so mighty anymore.

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Here is an idea: Support Mospeada for an entry in a Super Robot Wars game, have Tats and BW work together on something basic, both of them benefit, slowly they reduce their hate over time, and once they do then have them negotiate with HG and the like. It might be a silly idea but it is better than nothing.

Get Big West and Tatsunoko to effing well finish Irresponsible Captain Tylor... I'd pay good freaking money to see that.

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I think that right now, many of us would like to be a fly on the wall of Frank Agrama's office.

I would really love to know what he thinks of this whole thing.

While he must surely have known that the RT franchise was not as popular as it once was, the failure of this KS must cement in his mind that his once mighty franchise is not so mighty anymore.

I don't know man... I watched that horrible KS video for RT:A and I got the impression that Frank Agrama was barely interested in what he was trying to peddle to the masses. It's like those god awful infomercials hosted by some washed up celebrity peddling some POS gizmo for a pay check. This is what RT has come to? A senile old man begging his fandom to financially prop up his dying empire? Sad really. Maybe the reason ole Franky didn't fund the RT:A project himself is cuz he's f%#kin broke after all these years of helping to run the franchise into the ground.

Then again... Maybe he's f%#kin swimming in cash and goes to bed at night with protoculture playmates laughing the whole way. Hmmmm... That would explain why he didn't appear to give a flying f%#k in that video.

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I'm pretty sure Frank still has lots of money, most of which was made off things other than Robotech.

I'd like to believe that this whole kickstarter thing was the result of Frank calling Tommy and Kevin into his office and telling them that he's sick of them sitting on their collective asses doing nothing and that they had one month to do something productive with Robotech without touching another dime of his money, of they're fired.

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I'm pretty sure Frank still has lots of money, most of which was made off things other than Robotech.

I'd like to believe that this whole kickstarter thing was the result of Frank calling Tommy and Kevin into his office and telling them that he's sick of them sitting on their collective asses doing nothing and that they had one month to do something productive with Robotech without touching another dime of his money, of they're fired.

If you're right, there may be hope for Robotech somewhere down the line yet. To get there however, it's going to require new blood and new talent under a new and cohesive vision. If Frank really is a savvy business man, he's going to have to clean house over at HG and start from scratch. Either that, or sell the license and cut his losses. S%#t or get off the pot FCS already.

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I'm pretty sure Frank still has lots of money, most of which was made off things other than Robotech.

I'd like to believe that this whole kickstarter thing was the result of Frank calling Tommy and Kevin into his office and telling them that he's sick of them sitting on their collective asses doing nothing and that they had one month to do something productive with Robotech without touching another dime of his money, of they're fired.

That's the most likely scenario, if you ask me.

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Can someone explain what happened between those 2 companies please.

Seems that we can't get macross over here because of their beef. I'm sure that it didn't revolve around macross entirely.

There's a licensing thread but I think it goes something like this (I'm sure someone will correct me on some of this):

1) BigWest can't quite fund all of Macross so they get some financial help from Tatsunoko. Tatsunoko gets international licensing and distribution rights for their efforts.

2) Tatsunoko licenses rights to Harmony Gold to three properties, one is Macross

3) Tatsunoko takes BW to court to clarify the terms of the original compensation for helping finance Macross

4) Courts uphold that Tatsunoko does have the international distribution and merchandising rights to Macross

5) BW countersues claiming they have rights to Macross IP including derivative properties

6) Courts side with BW and determine that Tatsunoko only has international rights to the original show and its merchandising, no IP rights (no sequels, no derivatives).

I would presume that Tatsunoko and Harmony Gold have an agreement that Harmony Gold is to act toward the rights they have acquired in a way commiserate with how Tatsunoko views the world. That means that Harmony Gold can't go trying to make cozy with BigWest because Tatsunoko could yank the rights from them and if that happened, HG would lose EVERYTHING. So HG is a puppet of Tatsunoko in that it allows Tatsunoko to exert its will against BW by doing things like trademarking "Macross."

Edited by jenius
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Actually, I posted this in the earlier pages of this thread. It was Tatsunoko who sued BW first, and were granted ownership of the film of SDF Macross. BW and Nue countersued and received ownership of the designs, allowing them to produce derivatives.

If we take a look at the time-frame, circa 2001 Tatsunoko had had no involvement with the Macross franchise since 1984 or so. So, what would have made them want to confirm their ownership in a court of law, something that is nowhere near as common in Japan as it is in the US? It is not a coincidence that HG was trying to kick the RT franchise into high gear and needed all the rights issues cleared up. There's some arm-twisting going on there.

I would say it is Tatsunoko who is the puppet of HG, not the other way around.

Edited by Renato
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Thanks, I think I edited my little attempt at a history to make it more accurate. I definitely disagree on Tats being a puppet of HG; HG is such a minor player in everything. HG may have started it all by offering to pay more for the license if it really did allow them to make money through the sell of merchandise beyond the original series. Then Tats would begrudgingly have to figure that out.

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Hello,

I've been a loyal Robotech fan since 1984 and to be honest watching that show was what kept me from running around the streets when I was a kid and getting into trouble. RT was a gateway to the Macross stuff years later (I have Clash of the Bionoids on video somewhere) and I truly enjoy Macross and pride myself on having gotten a bunch of the various DVD's of all the series (Gubabba is just good silly). This site here turned me onto going out and buying some Yamoto's a few years ago and I've enjoyed alot of peoples collections here (I haven't bought any new stuff due to going back to college). At one point in time I even got to do some side work with Bateman via AIM a loooong time ago about an infantry battalion with the Marines stuff. It's really good to see him still around and doing well (even if he was an Air Wing guy).

Disclaimer: I have all the Palladium books and I dont feel bad about any of it. I also bought 2 of the mini-kit games at $250 and don't feel bad as I get to play with my 8 year old when it FINALLY gets here. That said this Robotech Academy thing was straight garbage. It's one thing to use momentum to try and boost interest in the line but really aside from Shadow Chronicles (which I thought was ok) the've seriously borked the whole thing. Going years without new content when they could have explored something about the RT world that didn't pertain to the other characters in the story. I'm seriously disappointed in the whole RTA setup and rolling out stuff half baked (the spy drone that looked like TF: Prime Soundwave.....didn't...even...try). I have to agree that at this point a fresh crew needs to be brought on to take the whole RT concept in a new direction. The only thing good about Love, Live, Alive was the 22 seconds of Dana leaving the planet. Seriously there needs to be a new talent infusion brought in.

Until then I'm content on waiting for the new Macross series whenever that comes out. Hopefully, I'll post more here in the future if I'm welcomed in.....

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Disclaimer: I have all the Palladium books and I dont feel bad about any of it. I also bought 2 of the mini-kit games at $250 and don't feel bad as I get to play with my 8 year old when it FINALLY gets here. That said this Robotech Academy thing was straight garbage. It's one thing to use momentum to try and boost interest in the line but really aside from Shadow Chronicles (which I thought was ok) the've seriously borked the whole thing. Going years without new content when they could have explored something about the RT world that didn't pertain to the other characters in the story. I'm seriously disappointed in the whole RTA setup and rolling out stuff half baked (the spy drone that looked like TF: Prime Soundwave.....didn't...even...try). I have to agree that at this point a fresh crew needs to be brought on to take the whole RT concept in a new direction. The only thing good about Love, Live, Alive was the 22 seconds of Dana leaving the planet. Seriously there needs to be a new talent infusion brought in.

Until then I'm content on waiting for the new Macross series whenever that comes out. Hopefully, I'll post more here in the future if I'm welcomed in.....

Nothing wrong with the Palladium books, I have a few myself. Haven't played in ages though.

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Heh - there were times when I did more Palladium RT gaming than actual assignments when I was at University. I miss those days sometimes. . . .

Welcome Sleepy042! Don't let the banter throw you off - we MW's give each other grief sometimes for loving one thing or another (be it Macross 7, Macross II, Robotech, or Southern Cross) but when it all comes down to it, we're all fans and we're all different, and that's part of what makes hanging out here fun and enlightening!

We're one fun, exciting, thoroughly dysfunctional family! The tongue in cheek abuse is part of the affection, er, at least most of the time. . . .

Heads definitely need to roll at HG. They need to define for themselves what they want Robotech to be in the simplest and most practical sense - is it purely a nostalgia based property? Is it something that can possibly reclassify itself as "retro" and use its eighties quirks to make itself self aware and cool? Is it willing to piss off the old fans and reboot itself to capture a new generation? The sad thing is in good hands with a more skilled and less egotistical creative staff, any one of those is a possibility - but finding highly skilled and creative people who would be willing to work on Robotech now is going to be a hard road.

The sad truth is, even in its heyday, Robotech bordered on being a nonentity - it was the almost ran against Voltron and Transformers that a few people really latched on to because of its visual expressiveness, emotional content, and verisimilitudinous mechanical design - three things that none of the derivative works seem to understand in more than the crudest respects. I don't think HG fully understood what it had even when it really had it . . . . .

Without the stain of the HG we have come to know and loathe - the ridiculously ligitous, arrogant, lazy and emotionally manipulative, outright parasitical company it appears to be - I'm sure there are a lot of creative people who could be given this particular challenge and would say: "cool, this could be fun"!

Cut the heads, and go about mending a LOT of fences, and then maybe they can do something with the property. Take Transformers for example - if HG had been willing to work with Hasbro on an anime accurate Jetfire along with a "VF-1S" repaint instead of suing them over a repainted G.I. Joe toy, imagine the money that could be made on toys for BOTH franchises (and the quality jump over Toynami). Imagine if they said to FASA, "Hey, there was some crazy legal stuff happening in the eighties and we both ended up with the same designs - that's all just silly history. Would you like to use the Unseen? We can sell a license for whatever we want to, just throw a little fiction in there to reference us - say some battlemech designs were pulled out of transmission coming out of a wormhole or something, put a little link to us and the Robotech universe on your page, and a little footnote in your gaming books when you use them and we're all good". Don't you think at least a few Battletech fans would get behind them if HG decided to produce destroid toys?

Even without the legal issues of Tatsunoko and Big West, if they really understood their market and were willing to treat all the interconnected fans of the original designs with respect, they could have made a lot of money over the years.

RT could be, if not thriving, getting by comfortably if they simply had a different attitude about their property.

Now they need to do a lot of kowtowing. Foreheads to the floor. Possibly until bleeding or borderline unconscious. Then Robotech might have a chance to really be as good as some people think it once was.

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I think we can all agree that the Macross / Robotech crowds aren't really all that different.

We all love the same mecha, same characters (even if the names have changed)

If things were just done with some common sense. We could all be happy.

Here's what I would do if I had money into the license:

1)Lobby Cartoon Network / Toonami to start running Robotech. Perhaps even running the full series

In the correct order to garner new interest by younger viewers.

2)Partner with a new company to produce some new high end collectible toys.

These toys will mainly be the mecha designs, and will mainly be from The "Macross Saga"

This will double dip with fans.

3) Redo the web store to lose all memory of the old RT negativity.

Revamp with a exclusive yearly membership that includes a exclusive

Merchandise offering like a action figure or custom colored mech.

This insuring a large returning customer base.

4) Frank can hire me to clean house and finish the rest of this list.

To at least make the license profitable. Never do something you can do for free!

Seriously it's not that hard, and idiot with merchandising experience can do.

It's shocking that the way it's run now, still have the same employee.

And.. Kevin don't steal my ideas.

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Hahaha - Kevin is getting lots of excellent free advice waaaaaay too late. . . . . trust your "enemies" (which is kind of sad that we Macross fans get that label - in some cases we're more allied than they realize) to know your strengths better than you do.

A think tank here could certainly get the franchise on track - I'd like to think it's because we're mostly intelligent people who love the subject matter, but lets face it, what has been done sucks SOOO bad they could probably use a ouija board and a sacrifice of KFC to a deity named Krouton and still do a better job.

Heh, I'd work for peanuts compared to what they're spending now - despite two degrees and a minor in graphic design I'm just breaking 20 thousand a year. Heh, I do have enough customer service experience to know that the term is something they really don't understand.

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Heh, I'd work for peanuts compared to what they're spending now - despite two degrees and a minor in graphic design I'm just breaking 20 thousand a year. Heh, I do have enough customer service experience to know that the term is something they really don't understand.

Man, it doesn't take a degree to tell you that they don't understand customer service, and haven't for a long time.

I'm utterly astonished they would leave the forums in the hands of unpaid volunteers with no oversight, but if they don't get one red cent for any part of the website that isn't the store, then they have to make do with what they have.

Though that policy in and of itself shows a gross misunderstanding of how to build and maintain a fanbase, and exposes a cynical view of the fans as a money spigot you can just open up at-will(which explains a lot of the merchandise).

And if their little moderator VS fanbase war WAS under guidance and oversight... well, then that's even worse! Who would approve that?!?

Of course, they SERIOUSLY need to accept that Macross fans ARE a part of their fandom and stop pushing the "us vs them" mentality.

I THOUGHT the Animeigo DVDs were an acceptance of that reality and a backing off of the war on Macross, but then they turned around and instead of the pre-Animeigo line that english Macross IS Robotech, they started saying Robotech was better and anyone who thought otherwise was in league with the devil. Which... may have endeared them to a fringe element of the Robotech fandom, but it alienated a lot more of them.

MOST fans aren't crazy rabid anime extremists and are perfectly willing to accept, and even invite the possibility of, two different franchises with a large scoop of melodrama and your full recommended daily allowance of deadly fighter robot plane destructive-type things. The War on Macross not only alienates purists but ALSO irks the RT fans that just wanna see some cartoons about angsty teenagers flying jetrobots.

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1)Lobby Cartoon Network / Toonami to start running Robotech. Perhaps even running the full series

In the correct order to garner new interest by younger viewers.

Actually, they tried that and succeeded in getting Robotech on Toonami the year after Cartoon Network created Toonami (1998), and it didn't turn out well for them.

As part of Toonami's 1998 lineup, it ran alongside Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Beast Wars: Transformers, and Superfriends. It didn't exactly do well. Toonami dropped Robotech from its lineup before they even managed to get through the series ONCE... they chose to end their broadcast of Robotech at episode 60, the end of the Robotech Masters saga.

Now that Toonami's lineup contains a fair amount of unedited, largely uncensored anime like Attack on Titan, Space Dandy, Black Lagoon, Gurren Lagann, Blue Exorcist, the fillerless version of Dragonball Z and the uncut Naruto Shippuden, I can't see a really old, obviously rewritten show like Robotech lasting even as long as it did in 1998. Macross Frontier would probably do pretty well there though.

2)Partner with a new company to produce some new high end collectible toys.

These toys will mainly be the mecha designs, and will mainly be from The "Macross Saga"

This will double dip with fans.

That requires, as a prerequisite, being able to convince the company they'll get a significant ROI... not something Robotech has historically been able to do, to such an extent that Harmony Gold can't even be arsed to lie about it.

3) Redo the web store to lose all memory of the old RT negativity.

Revamp with a exclusive yearly membership that includes a exclusive

Merchandise offering like a action figure or custom colored mech.

This insuring a large returning customer base.

So... ditching all memory of the "old RT negativity", that basically entails "scrap the entire damn thing and the website it's on, lose the URL, and put it up under a completely different name somewhere else". Robotech.com is synonymous with some of the very worst Robotech negativity to both Robotech fans and Macross fans. It's one of the few things almost everybody agrees upon, in my experience.

Considering their yearly output is usually less than one toy, and they'd swiftly run out of material the way they did with the MPCs, doing a "yearly membership" thing is going to be a no-sell unless Robotech's got some extremely successful original IP coming out at regular intervals (in short, "when hell freezes", and I don't mean the town in Michigan). That approach only ensures you have a large returning customer base if you have something people want, and your reputation isn't that of a criminally inept pillock... so Harmony Gold is 0 for 2 there, i'm afraid, when higher quality Macross stuff can be had from Japan at prices that aren't completely heart attack-inducing.

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More people have cable or dish these days. Backbone the late 90's things were still ramping not as accesible to young kids. They were watching pizza cats and sailor moon on regular tv. Lol

I do agree that frontier would be a better choice. Even Plus on a weekend special type deal. Attack on Titan is real close to an R rating, and kids love. My nephews can't get enough. All the blood and people getting killed three me off when I first saw it.

A few of my nephews (15+) stay up to watch adult swim.

So instead of kickstarter academy, they could have done a kickstarter to try and get frontier over here with 100 percent transparency on their efforts.

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More people have cable or dish these days. Backbone the late 90's things were still ramping not as accesible to young kids. They were watching pizza cats and sailor moon on regular tv. Lol

Yeah, I remember my kid sister loved to watch Sailor Moon's DIC/DHX release on broadcast.

I do agree that frontier would be a better choice. Even Plus on a weekend special type deal. Attack on Titan is real close to an R rating, and kids love. My nephews can't get enough. All the blood and people getting killed three me off when I first saw it.

A few of my nephews (15+) stay up to watch adult swim.

So instead of kickstarter academy, they could have done a kickstarter to try and get frontier over here with 100 percent transparency on their efforts.

Yeah, between its status as an edited rewrite and its age, I just don't think Robotech has what it takes to hack it on television in the US anymore. "Unedited and uncensored" has become a fairly noteworthy selling point for big-name shonen properties like Toonami's release of Naruto Shippuden and the latest US release of One Piece. I could see there being pushbash or at least greatly diminished interest in Robotech purely on the grounds that it's such an obvious bowdlerization, never mind its age.

Presenting something more modern would be the way to go... the problem being that Robotech doesn't really HAVE anything to show for the last twenty-eight years and change, and thus nothing to air. Its day has passed, I think, and I don't think there will ever be the kind of "return to grace" that Harmony Gold (and maybe Carl Macek) spent the last fifteen years or so wishing for.

If Harmony Gold actually had the ability to do a Macross Frontier Kickstarter, that'd probably do far, far better than anything they slap the Robotech name on... the catch being that they have no rights to Macross Frontier.

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Wow. This is just awesome. This has to be the most civil RT thread in the history of MW. I think in part to the fact that even the RT fans saw how bad this kickstarter was planned/executed but still...

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This is definitely going to lower the dollar value of the Robotech brand. Best thing they can do right now is kill whatever plan the current Robotech team got going next. Wait X amount of time and start listening to offers to license Robotech to successful people who can bring something new.

Robotech has some name recognition. There's little support for original ideas any more so Robotech at least has that going for it. Robotech also has small dedicated fan base and a long mythology. If they want Robotech to rise from the dead Harmony has to be willing to piss off their fan base and go the total reboot or total retcon route or total new bastardization story that has nothing to do with Robotech another than the name and transforming robots. Nobody outside of Robotech fans knows what is going on. This is a dying patient. Time to pass it on to some brilliant surgeons with risky ideas that just might work or kill it. Do nothing and the patient still dies.

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Wow. This is just awesome. This has to be the most civil RT thread in the history of MW. I think in part to the fact that even the RT fans saw how bad this kickstarter was planned/executed but still...

Personally, I think the reason this thread has stayed away from the mockery is that Robotech Academy was SO bad as a concept that even poking fun at it just feels pointless. It'd be like mocking a clown. Those who weren't quietly buoyed by the way that the various Robotech fans were blunt about its lack of quality probably only felt a sense of pity and quiet embarrassment on behalf of the Robotech fandom.

This is definitely going to lower the dollar value of the Robotech brand. Best thing they can do right now is kill whatever plan the current Robotech team got going next. Wait X amount of time and start listening to offers to license Robotech to successful people who can bring something new.

Harmony Gold is still tossing around vague and poorly thought-out suggestions that Robotech Academy might actually still be in the works... which hasn't inspired confidence in many fans, most of whom remember that they said the same thing for Robotech 3000 after Netter Digital went under and it still ended up dead in early development.

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As part of Toonami's 1998 lineup, it ran alongside Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Beast Wars: Transformers, and Superfriends. It didn't exactly do well. Toonami dropped Robotech from its lineup before they even managed to get through the series ONCE... they chose to end their broadcast of Robotech at episode 60, the end of the Robotech Masters saga.

oh, old school Toonami; I remember watching the entire block, nearly 3 hours every day for literally years. Good times. ^_^

Edited by anime52k8
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==============================

Mod Note

This thread will be closing today. And I wanted to point out that unlike the Kickstarter project, we stuck to our guns and kept this thread open till the end of the proposed project date despite request to close the thread when the project was cancelled. We can finish what we start and for the most part, stay on track. I would consider that an accomplishment among our user base.

==============================

As for calls for HG to bring over more Macross, I say, "Why?" I would find it more appealing for this generation for Big West and Bandai (who have had a very good working relationship since the VF-1 toy) to consider streaming the franchise online. They have been doing it for Gundam lately and I find that to be a very good medium to release, especially for overseas. I also see it as cutting out the old model of licensors/licensees (the middle man). Certain things would have to happen for this to occur and I don't see that in the immediate future.

I also say "Why" because is what is Robotech these days? Is it Macross? Is it Southern Cross or Mospeada? Is it something else? From this KS project and RTSC, it seems like RT is trying to be something else (Mospeada-lite? Mospeada II?) but it can't break free from the original series. And it doesn't look like the "Creative team" want to change that while at the same time, trying to move away from the original series. This is why I've been advocating for them to just reboot the series from the beginning. Take the bones of the original and start fresh. No one is going to watch the old series to understand any new series. A KS project to reboot would probably have had more backers. Maybe. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening either. Not with this current "Creative Team".

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As for calls for HG to bring over more Macross, I say, "Why?" I would find it more appealing for this generation for Big West and Bandai (who have had a very good working relationship since the VF-1 toy) to consider streaming the franchise online. They have been doing it for Gundam lately and I find that to be a very good medium to release, especially for overseas. I also see it as cutting out the old model of licensors/licensees (the middle man). Certain things would have to happen for this to occur and I don't see that in the immediate future.

Streaming would be a very nice solution. For me personally, it would also be nice to see more Blu-rays with subtitles, even if they come direct from companies like BW, Bandai, and their subsidiaries. I really liked how Gundam Unicorn and Space Battleship Yamato 2199 were distributed, for example. I would be ecstatic to see the Macross properties using a similar model, but I'm not aware of the obstacles that would need to be cleared internationally for those releases to go as smoothly.

To be honest, in my ideal world it would be great if the "creative team" at HG just bowed out of the way and stopped fighting everyone. Let those licenses expire. Stop pointing fingers. Let the legal crap unwind and please find another hobby.

If Robotech is supposed to continue, I agree that a reboot is necessary. It may have easter egg moments or cheeky nods to what was when Carl Maceck was around, but a new Robotech shouldn't be anything like what we knew or grew up with. I think the best way forward is to sever those connections and give the idea of "Robotech" a whole new life.

Edited by technoblue
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