New Macross TV Series in 20xx (sometime this decade)

[Convectuoso]

17 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

At this point, it seems safe to say that plans for a new Macross series have been preempted by plans for an all-original second Macross Delta movie... possibly titled Macross Delta II: the Search for More Money.  

[Master Dex]

If someone took a Boring Not-a-flamethrower and put some UNS kite stickers, or NUNS or what have you... It'd pass for a Macross The Flamethrower lol. 

[Bolt]

40 minutes ago, Master Dex said:

If someone took a Boring Not-a-flamethrower and put some UNS kite stickers, or NUNS or what have you... It'd pass for a Macross The Flamethrower lol. 

While they’re drinking Teslaquila..

what a sad, dead thread..

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Master Dex said:

If someone took a Boring Not-a-flamethrower and put some UNS kite stickers, or NUNS or what have you... It'd pass for a Macross The Flamethrower lol. 

Bah, we've got enough engineers here... I'm sure one of us can build one from scratch.

(And those of us in the Northeast and Northern Midwest have plenty of motivation to do so... it's already snowing.)

 

25 minutes ago, Bolt said:

what a sad, dead thread..

Not half as sad as the thread for the new Macross Delta movie's going to be.

With no reasonable expectation of a coherent plot, all we can look forward to there is fifty pages of Walkure fanboys gushing about the latest fanservice-y promotional art of "waifus" who got no character development.  

[Bolt]

Lol.

 @Seto Kaiba you don’t pull punches!

[spacemanoeuvres]

6 hours ago, Bolt said:

what a sad, dead thread..

*sheds manly tear* 

[SMS007]

On 11/13/2018 at 12:54 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

At this point, it seems safe to say that plans for a new Macross series have been preempted by plans for an all-original second Macross Delta movie... possibly titled Macross Delta II: the Search for More Money. 

I'll buy the yogurt.

[Podtastic]

14 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Bah, we've got enough engineers here... I'm sure one of us can build one from scratch.

(And those of us in the Northeast and Northern Midwest have plenty of motivation to do so... it's already snowing.)

 

Not half as sad as the thread for the new Macross Delta movie's going to be.

With no reasonable expectation of a coherent plot, all we can look forward to there is fifty pages of Walkure fanboys gushing about the latest fanservice-y promotional art of "waifus" who got no character development.  

Even with a coherent plot etc it would still be merely ok. To be awesome curvaceous alien mecha and massively toned up action need to be added.

And that does not seem likely.

Edited November 15, 2018 by Podtastic

[Saruta]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

With no reasonable expectation of a coherent plot, all we can look forward to there is fifty pages of Walkure fanboys gushing about the latest fanservice-y promotional art of "waifus" who got no character development.  

But who *needs* a waifu with no character development? Mere anime boob can already be had on r**e34 in any shape or form. Good "selection of waifu" animes, including idol ones, actually make a point of developing the characters.

I do like how Mikumo sings. though. Or should I really say, I do like how JUNNA sings. Unlike the Frontier singers, who, I think, lose some of their power when not coupled with Yoko Kanno, JUNNA holds her level outside Macross for all I know (though I only saw a couple of works - would want more!)

[Saruta]

I guess what I want to say is... if they really want to do idol genre they should actually do idol genre. Taking cues from the best, like Love Live. But with a sci fi slant. It would not be classic Macross but I'd watch that.

I'd want to see the full angst of Mikumo realizing she is a clone. I'd want to see Freyja staying by her side through the worst of it and their relationship developing beyond the hints in series and movie. Darnit, demote Mirage to extra already (she's halfway there) and make the mandatory triangle Hayate-Freyja-Mikumo, that would actually be a proper triangle, not a pretend one. I'd want to see established relationship niceties between Makina and Reina (and I said niceties not lewdities), and Makina giving another go to her engineering dreams and perhaps they'd build something flying together, with Reina doing the AI, or perhaps they try but fail because something. I'd want to see Kaname going through hope and then grief and then picked up by the girls actually caring about her even while they sort their couple stuff.

Yes, none of this is "macross", well so what. 

 

[TehPW]

22 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Bah, we've got enough engineers here... I'm sure one of us can build one from scratch.

They just arrested some asshat in Florida yesterday, who was making homemade explosives (with working timers) using the same method used to make ISIS-quality boom-booms. Sometimes Do-it-yourself isn't such a good idea... clown said he was making fireworks... :/

[Seto Kaiba]

22 hours ago, Bolt said:

 @Seto Kaiba you don’t pull punches!

Sure I do!  You didn't see me say anything about Big West having an untapped market for Walkure-branded braces for fans suffering from waifu-induced "tennis elbow".  

(Until now, anyway... now that I've said it, it'll be a preorder bonus for movie 2 tickets.)

 

8 hours ago, Saruta said:

But who *needs* a waifu with no character development? Mere anime boob can already be had on r**e34 in any shape or form. Good "selection of waifu" animes, including idol ones, actually make a point of developing the characters.

That was my point, yes.

Macross Delta's sh*tty handling of Walkure could be called a genuine affront to the real idol group, being promoted through an anime series where four-fifths of the group are characters so generic you can practically see the barcodes.

Edited November 15, 2018 by Seto Kaiba

[no3Ljm]

9 hours ago, Saruta said:

I guess what I want to say is... if they really want to do idol genre they should actually do idol genre. Taking cues from the best, like Love Live. But with a sci fi slant. It would not be classic Macross but I'd watch that.

I'd want to see the full angst of Mikumo realizing she is a clone. I'd want to see Freyja staying by her side through the worst of it and their relationship developing beyond the hints in series and movie. Darnit, demote Mirage to extra already (she's halfway there) and make the mandatory triangle Hayate-Freyja-Mikumo, that would actually be a proper triangle, not a pretend one. I'd want to see established relationship niceties between Makina and Reina (and I said niceties not lewdities), and Makina giving another go to her engineering dreams and perhaps they'd build something flying together, with Reina doing the AI, or perhaps they try but fail because something. I'd want to see Kaname going through hope and then grief and then picked up by the girls actually caring about her even while they sort their couple stuff.

Yes, none of this is "macross", well so what. 

Guess what? I do like your story suggestion for me to start caring for the characters again. And I'm pretty sure they can fit it along with Valkyrie battle actions within 26 episodes. As long that they write it properly and strategically per episodes.  

 

[Saruta]

2 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

Guess what? I do like your story suggestion for me to start caring for the characters again. And I'm pretty sure they can fit it along with Valkyrie battle actions within 26 episodes. As long that they write it properly and strategically per episodes.  

 

They should just hire fans to write. SDFM-1982 was full of homages to Star Trek. Star Trek did just that and, well, survived. Gundam, the competitor of old, did it too.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RunningTheAsylum

P.S. And I should probably get over the aversion to way-too-much-commerce and watch AKB0048. It's Kawamori's take on a sci fi idol show after all, and even some of the premise seems to reference Macross.

Edited November 15, 2018 by Saruta

[Seto Kaiba]

5 minutes ago, Saruta said:

They should just hire fans to write. SDFM-1982 was full of homages to Star Trek. Star Trek did just that and, well, survived. Gundam, the competitor of old, did it too.

The huge, glaring problem with that idea is that very few fans can write worth a damn... and only a fraction of those can write a story that appeals to someone besides them.

Very rarely does having fans end up writing for the series they're fans of turn out well.  Much more commonly, what you get is a terribly self-indulgent legitimized fanfic.

There's an uncountably vast number of examples of why this is a terrible idea in the expanded universes of most any established franchise like Star Trek, Star Wars, etc..  Then there are the standalone examples like the nigh-unwatchable Dragon Ball GT and Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, several Gundam titles like UC and Thunderbolt, Star Wars: the Last Jedi, Star Trek: Nemesis, or that last Ghostbusters movie.  SonicTeam as a whole is basically the biggest example from video gaming.  Matt Ward achieved memetic status in tabletop gaming for being a fan running the asylum who genuinely belonged in a straightjacket, and was near-universally reviled for his Mary Sue writing tendencies.

[Sanity is Optional]

What? I liked Gundam Thunderbolt.

[Saruta]

A mention of the last Ghostbusters movie means an impending flaming shootout, and it appears that some of the Gundams have the same property. Duck and cover so.

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Macross Delta's sh*tty handling of Walkure could be called a genuine affront to the real idol group, being promoted through an anime series where four-fifths of the group are characters so generic you can practically see the barcodes.

I'd dispute this definition. Each of the characters (at least in Walkure) have potential, they are not bland by nature. It's just that the potential is never realized. We just get a few strokes where entire storylines would work.

Mikumo. A powerful voice... who does not even know where she came from, and ends up finding that out from the enemy.

Kaname. A *failed* conventional singer who gets a second lease on a stage life because of fold receptors, then gets sidelined there by Mikumo, while staying a team leader and caring for the group (even Mikumo) intensely. Also the only one able to see behind Messer's stern facade. 

Reina. Someone who knew only the digital world and never had an idea about how to sing and how to love - until ensountering Mikumo and Makina. 

Makina. Torn between actually enjoying being cute, a proud engineering heritage, and being an actual lesbian. Closest to bland of them all, possibly, but "it's not the same without her" for all the others - something they perhaps wanted to show by getting Makina wounded, but failed.

Freyja... well she's pretty much the only character to get development in canon. Two versions of it, though more in the series of course. Creator's pet? As for the others, it's almost like someone *tried* to write out proper characters, then got loads of strokes of the axe?

 

[Focslain]

18 minutes ago, Saruta said:

I'd dispute this definition. Each of the characters (at least in Walkure) have potential, they are not bland by nature. It's just that the potential is never realized. We just get a few strokes where entire storylines would work.

Mikumo. A powerful voice... who does not even know where she came from, and ends up finding that out from the enemy.

Kaname. A *failed* conventional singer who gets a second lease on a stage life because of fold receptors, then gets sidelined there by Mikumo, while staying a team leader and caring for the group (even Mikumo) intensely. Also the only one able to see behind Messer's stern facade. 

Reina. Someone who knew only the digital world and never had an idea about how to sing and how to love - until ensountering Mikumo and Makina. 

Makina. Torn between actually enjoying being cute, a proud engineering heritage, and being an actual lesbian. Closest to bland of them all, possibly, but "it's not the same without her" for all the others - something they perhaps wanted to show by getting Makina wounded, but failed.

Freyja... well she's pretty much the only character to get development in canon. Two versions of it, though more in the series of course. Creator's pet? As for the others, it's almost like someone *tried* to write out proper characters, then got loads of strokes of the axe?

 

Not really, a look into the member's RL history seems a bit like their fictional counterparts. With the exception of Nao (Reina) it's a little too close for comfort especially in the case of Minori (Freyja) and JUNNA (Mikumo). 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, Saruta said:

A mention of the last Ghostbusters movie means an impending flaming shootout, and it appears that some of the Gundams have the same property. Duck and cover so.

... I have never seen anyone seriously attempt to defend the last Ghostbusters movie.  I'd actually like to see someone try to keep a straight face attempting to.

 

 

2 minutes ago, Saruta said:

I'd dispute this definition. Each of the characters (at least in Walkure) have potential, they are not bland by nature. It's just that the potential is never realized. We just get a few strokes where entire storylines would work.

As in real life, unrealized potential counts for precisely f*ck-all... which left them as a one-dimensional Sheryl knockoff, a generic "broken bird", a generic "caged crook" fanservice lesbian, a generic "miss fanservice" ditz, and The One Actual Character respectively.

[Saruta]

@Focslain can you tell me more about the JUNNA real life connection? Freyja/Minori is kinda obvious - and obviously engineered with the auditions. And I'm really struggling to find anything at all about JUNNA anyway - if you understand Japanese you probably have seen a lot more about her.

Also, Kaname? Did Kiyono Yasuno also have a lacklustre singing career attempt?

[no3Ljm]

2 hours ago, Saruta said:

Also, Kaname? Did Kiyono Yasuno also have a lacklustre singing career attempt?

 

[Mommar]

On 11/14/2018 at 8:45 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Bah, we've got enough engineers here... I'm sure one of us can build one from scratch.

(And those of us in the Northeast and Northern Midwest have plenty of motivation to do so... it's already snowing.)

 

Not half as sad as the thread for the new Macross Delta movie's going to be.

With no reasonable expectation of a coherent plot, all we can look forward to there is fifty pages of Walkure fanboys gushing about the latest fanservice-y promotional art of "waifus" who got no character development.  

And maybe armor for the rest of the crew...

[Seto Kaiba]

1 minute ago, Mommar said:

And maybe armor for the rest of the crew...

Oh come on... isn't the writing punishment enough?

As much as I love the VF-31's design, that Armored Pack is just a sinfully ugly and terribly lazy-looking piece of design work to my eyes.  There's just no sense of intent to the design... like fitting/suiting the VF-31 or how the VF-31 would use it weren't even considered.  It's like some intern just slapped together a bunch of different weapons systems from Macross Frontier art assets and knocked off for lunch.  

[Mommar]

32 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh come on... isn't the writing punishment enough?

As much as I love the VF-31's design, that Armored Pack is just a sinfully ugly and terribly lazy-looking piece of design work to my eyes.  There's just no sense of intent to the design... like fitting/suiting the VF-31 or how the VF-31 would use it weren't even considered.  It's like some intern just slapped together a bunch of different weapons systems from Macross Frontier art assets and knocked off for lunch.  

All I was saying was people will be excited about that too.

Edited November 16, 2018 by Mommar

[kajnrig]

On 11/14/2018 at 9:45 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

With no reasonable expectation of a coherent plot, all we can look forward to there is fifty pages of Walkure fanboys gushing about the latest fanservice-y promotional art of "waifus" who got no character development.  

Say what you will about the show and the characters and the singing groups, and I've said plenty, but I will never say no to more fanservice-y promotional art of Kaname or Mirage. I just wish the merchandise would go beyond that.

18 hours ago, Saruta said:

I'd want to see the full angst of Mikumo realizing she is a clone. I'd want to see Freyja staying by her side through the worst of it and their relationship developing beyond the hints in series and movie. Darnit, demote Mirage to extra already (she's halfway there) and make the mandatory triangle Hayate-Freyja-Mikumo, that would actually be a proper triangle, not a pretend one.

What hints? Your implication is that there was a Sheryl/Ranka-style idolization/infatuation/lust/love thing going on, but I'm not sure if the material supports that thinking. Mostly I remember Mikumo just being a bitch to Freyja and oblivious about it. (On account of her being three years old and all.) Maybe I just don't remember it...

18 hours ago, Saruta said:

I'd want to see Kaname going through hope and then grief and then picked up by the girls actually caring about her even while they sort their couple stuff.

Personally, I'd like to see a story arc where Kaname DOESN'T become an idol... and is perfectly okay with that. Like Myung, but with a happy ending. That was the vibe I got from her anyway... at least until they stopped giving any of them any vibes at all. She seemed to be perfectly settled into her role of mentor(/producer?) of the group, and her story seemed to be the burgeoning workplace relationship with Arad, yeah remember that? the interesting story thread they scuttled in favor of Moody McAngstface creeping on her and then awkwardly contrived what passed for them as drama? Blargh, I'm getting sidetracked again.

[Graham]

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

several Gundam titles like UC and Thunderbolt, 

I love Unicorn and Thunderbolt.

What I can't stand is all the non Universal Century Gundam series

[Focslain]

@Saruta

There isn't much more other then she was an unknown that had a voice that hits like a truck.

But like Mikumo she didn't do a general audition and was just brought in. Walkure is her first gig (same for Minori and Nozumi).

As for history you can add a lack of it for JUNNA, at least via Twitter, her account was opened up just prior to the Walkure announcement. From what I can see all her social media started up around that time. At least without going into stalker territory.

Also if your looking for more of her work I suggest grabbing her newest album 17 Sai ga Utsukushii Nante, Dare ga Itta. it has a good selection of her post Walkure work minus her first album Vai! Ya! Vai!, which was pretty good to start.

Edited November 16, 2018 by Focslain

[Seto Kaiba]

17 hours ago, Sanity is Optional said:

What? I liked Gundam Thunderbolt.

7 hours ago, Graham said:

I love Unicorn and Thunderbolt.

Liking Unicorn and/or Thunderbolt and acknowledging that they both suffer from the most common problems associated with titles where fans of the franchise are now part of the production staff are not mutually exclusive propositions.

Unicorn was pure continuity porn, so it was only fully accessible to hardcore fans who've seen the dozen or so prerequisite shows and movies even after being reformatted into the RE:0096 TV series.

Thunderbolt was an edgelord Gundam series written by Buckets of Blood guy. 

 

 

12 hours ago, kajnrig said:

Say what you will about the show and the characters and the singing groups, and I've said plenty, but I will never say no to more fanservice-y promotional art of Kaname or Mirage. I just wish the merchandise would go beyond that.

So... redheads, huh?

 

12 hours ago, kajnrig said:

What hints? Your implication is that there was a Sheryl/Ranka-style idolization/infatuation/lust/love thing going on, but I'm not sure if the material supports that thinking. Mostly I remember Mikumo just being a bitch to Freyja and oblivious about it. (On account of her being three years old and all.) Maybe I just don't remember it...

Definitely not.  Freyja idolized Walkure as a whole because her dream was to become a member, but she never showed any particular deference to any of its members after she'd joined... let alone the level of borderline "les yay" hero worship Ranka reserved for Sheryl.  It would've been a bit weird and out of place, IMO, given that almost all of her personal interactions with Mikumo were Mikumo bullying her in full "Queen Bitch" knockoff-Sheryl mode (and that they already had a designated source of lesbian fanservice).

 

12 hours ago, kajnrig said:

That was the vibe I got from her anyway... at least until they stopped giving any of them any vibes at all.

... there's a joke I could make here, but it's so thoroughly crass that I can't bring myself to say it.  

 

12 hours ago, kajnrig said:

She seemed to be perfectly settled into her role of mentor(/producer?) of the group, and her story seemed to be the burgeoning workplace relationship with Arad, yeah remember that? the interesting story thread they scuttled in favor of Moody McAngstface creeping on her and then awkwardly contrived what passed for them as drama? Blargh, I'm getting sidetracked again.

It would've been an unnatural resolution, IMO... her sole defining character trait was her anxiety over being a failure.  Between her depression over having failed as a solo idol, her depression over what she saw as the inevitable creeping usurpation of her role as Walkure's leader by Mikumo, and then the trauma and subsequent depression from the death of Messer Ihlefeld shortly after he confessed that he loved her had been obsessively stalking her since she unknowingly saved him on Alfheim, giving her a near term happy end isn't going to feel very natural.  Poor gal's got a LOT of issues to work through.  Good thing Macross is such a relentlessly upbeat franchise.

[Sanity is Optional]

Honestly, I thought Thunderbolt did pretty well at walking the line between dark end edgy, and having characters that were fraked up in realistic ways.

[Seto Kaiba]

26 minutes ago, Sanity is Optional said:

Honestly, I thought Thunderbolt did pretty well at walking the line between dark end edgy, and having characters that were fraked up in realistic ways.

The problem with Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt is that its "promoted fanboy" writers had precisely zero clue how to write a bleak and dark story effectively.

Moderation is the key to writing a successful bleak and dark story.  If the story is unstintingly dark, bleak, and depressing then that just becomes the new baseline "normal" and loses all its impact and meaning VERY quickly.  To use darkness effectively, it has to be broken up and interspersed with periods of lighter material that throw the darkness into sharp relief.  The writers of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and Mobile Suit Victory Gundam understood this principle very well.  Like so many bad fan fiction authors, Gundam Thunderbolt's writers assumed a dark story needed to be uniformly and unstintingly dark and thus jumped straight to MAXIMUM GRIMDARK for the duration.  Consequently, the entire story quickly became ridiculous when every character was obliged to have a dark and tragic backstory and nobody was allowed to have redeeming character traits.  You can't engage with a protagonist who's an utter and unrepentant psychopath, or sympathize with a crew of complete and utter irredeemable a-holes.

Crap like that is why you keep fanboys far, FAR away from the writer's chair... and why I used it as an example of why having fans write Macross sequels is a terrible idea.

(You don't even want to get into alternative problems like "Creator's Pet" characters... Wesley Crusher, anyone?)

[Sanity is Optional]

I viewed it as though the entire story was from the antagonist's point of view. The Zeon pilot certainly seemed more like a protagonist than Mr. Jazz and murder.

[Bolt]

1 hour ago, Sanity is Optional said:

Honestly, I thought Thunderbolt did pretty well at walking the line between dark end edgy, and having characters that were fraked up in realistic ways.

Same here! 

Though I do agree, being a fan doesn’t mean you can write or present a good story that everyone (besides the hardcore base) is going to enjoy or even be able to follow..

 

[Sanity is Optional]

Generally speaking, both Unicorn and Thunderbolt were well received; Unicorn starting as a Novel then adapted to both manga and anime, and Thunderbolt starting as a manga and then adapted to anime.

Meanwhile G no Reconguista, by Tomino himself, was a complete mess, and the worst Gundam series I've ever watched by a good margin.

[Saruta]

Okay, I did a duck-and-cover for Ghostbusters, but the shootout started anyway for Gundam...

Anyway I don't think we have to go that far for creator's pet characters. Ranka Lee. The creator did know to balance it with not letting her ever win the triangle, but everything else... I tried her on some Mary Sue test quiz once, she passed with flying colours.

 

Edited November 16, 2018 by Saruta

[Saruta]

5 hours ago, Focslain said:

@Saruta

There isn't much more other then she was an unknown that had a voice that hits like a truck.

But like Mikumo she didn't do a general audition and was just brought in. Walkure is her first gig (same for Minori and Nozumi).

As for history you can add a lack of it for JUNNA, at least via Twitter, her account was opened up just prior to the Walkure announcement. From what I can see all her social media started up around that time. At least without going into stalker territory.

Also if your looking for more of her work I suggest grabbing her newest album 17 Sai ga Utsukushii Nante, Dare ga Itta. it has a good selection of her post Walkure work minus her first album Vai! Ya! Vai!, which was pretty good to start.

Thanks! I did not know she was "just brought in" and did ont go through the same auditions that got us Freyja. That scene in the movie, with "friends in high places" mentioned, definitely has a different feeling now.

(Might steal this for a story plot. Not a fanfic, "legally distinct". The best way to hide an android/clone: have her play one on TV).