Harmony Gold suing Tatsunoko

[nightmareB4macross]

I had no idea that the VF-4 was part of the R-Tec fandom.

[Seto Kaiba]

58 minutes ago, Einherjar said:

Aging posers do not deserve to be posted on the “Macross in the weirdest places” thread.

If anything, it sort of confirms people’s fears where some of the “professionals” are getting inspiration for their work these days.

That's not anything new... Robotech's comic licensees have been tracing from Macross artbooks and outright stealing characters, mechanical designs, and entire plots from other anime (incl. Macross sequels) since the late 80's.

My personal favorite example is a comic called Robotech: Wings of Gibraltar in which every VF-1 is traced from the Gold Book, the "new" VF featured in the story is basically a badly drawn VF-19F, and the scientist at the top secret facility that created it is literally Brent Spiner's character from Independence Day, traced from stills from that film so he looks completely different from every other character in the comic.

(This kind of copyright infringement was so commonplace in Robotech's old comics that Harmony Gold decided to decanonize them all and avoid reprinting or referencing them to avoid legal troubles down the road, and even admitted they'd f'ed up royally by not exercising oversight over what their licensees had been doing.)

 

17 minutes ago, nightmareB4macross said:

I had no idea that the VF-4 was part of the R-Tec fandom.

The VF-X-4... they can't legally use the VF-4.

It's one of those things the Robotech fandom has been obsessing over for decades.  It only shows up as a model, so naturally they surrounded it with a whirlwind of unfounded speculation until Tommy Yune had it appear in the "From the Stars" miniseries back in ~2001.  Not being a mechanical designer, he dodged the question of making it transform by having it encounter mechanical issues during its brief sortie.  Robotech didn't finally design its own transformation for the VF-X-4 until a few years ago with the Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter, where it was a stretch goal reward.

Edited July 22, 2019 by Seto Kaiba

[nightmareB4macross]

Thank for the explanation, Seto Kaiba.

[JB0]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 

(This kind of copyright infringement was so commonplace in Robotech's old comics that Harmony Gold decided to decanonize them all and avoid reprinting or referencing them to avoid legal troubles down the road, and even admitted they'd f'ed up royally by not exercising oversight over what their licensees had been doing.)

Ahhhhhh.

I'd thought they meant lack of oversight in the "the quality is rubbish and we don't want to be bothered with sorting out a coherent timeline that considers all this crap" sense, not the "holy crap, they pirated from EVERYWHERE to make these, didn't they?" sense.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, nightmareB4macross said:

Thank for the explanation, Seto Kaiba.

The poster the hack is standing in front of is a blown up copy of one of the covers from the aforementioned "From the Stars" miniseries where the VF-X-4 was used.

 

 

8 hours ago, JB0 said:

I'd thought they meant lack of oversight in the "the quality is rubbish and we don't want to be bothered with sorting out a coherent timeline that considers all this crap" sense, not the "holy crap, they pirated from EVERYWHERE to make these, didn't they?" sense.

Well, that too... but, with the benefit of hindsight, it seems pretty likely that the rampant copyright infringement and tracing was a significant factor in Harmony Gold revoking Academy Comics's license in 1996 and Antarctic Press's license in 1998.  Some of it, in all fairness, could probably be attributed to Harmony Gold not really making it clear what their license was actually covering... since a lot of the infringement was from Macross sequels.

Probably the lowest point was the promotional tie-in comic for the vaporware Robotech: Crystal Dreams video game for the Nintendo 64.  That black and white comic was about 80% tracing, and almost entirely from DYRL?.  Antarctic presided over that fiasco, but almost all of their comics infringed on at least one copyright.  Usually more than one.

(Amusingly, I had forgotten that Robotech Academy was originally the working title for Robotech: Crystal Dreams... how ironic they BOTH became vaporware.)

[Bolt]

I’m sure he hasn’t been properly hazed to earn that shirt..

[tekering]

54 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

the rampant copyright infringement and tracing was a significant factor in Harmony Gold revoking Academy Comics's license in 1996

Out of morbid curiosity, I looked up Robotech: Breaking Point, an Academy Comics title in 1996...

Now I actually feel bad about making fun of the Titan Comics run.  

Copyright infringement and tracing could only have elevated such shockingly amateurish work.  I had no idea professionally-published comics could look like that... especially one inspired by Macross.  

No wonder Harmony Gold pulled the plug!  

[Seto Kaiba]

7 minutes ago, tekering said:

Copyright infringement and tracing could only have elevated such shockingly amateurish work.  I had no idea professionally-published comics could look like that... especially one inspired by Macross.  

No wonder Harmony Gold pulled the plug!  

There is, to be fair, at least a modest amount of evidence to indicate that Academy and Antarctic were not giving Robotech their A-game... as it similarly true for Titan Comics.

[NightmarePlus]

Jesus christ it's like those drawings are begging to be put out of their misery.

[Old_Nash]

18 minutes ago, tekering said:

Out of morbid curiosity, I looked up Robotech: Breaking Point, an Academy Comics title in 1996...

Now I actually feel bad about making fun of the Titan Comics run.  

Copyright infringement and tracing could only have elevated such shockingly amateurish work.  I had no idea professionally-published comics could look like that... especially one inspired by Macross.  

No wonder Harmony Gold pulled the plug!  

OMYGREATLUNA!!!

What someone can sell a trash like this??

[tekering]

11 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

There is, to be fair, at least a modest amount of evidence to indicate that Academy and Antarctic were not giving Robotech their A-game... 

Yeah, I assume the editorial staff were acting out of spite.  

[Ikaruss]

15 hours ago, Einherjar said:

Aging posers do not deserve to be posted on the “Macross in the weirdest places” thread.

If anything, it sort of confirms people’s fears where some of the “professionals” are getting inspiration for their work these days.

Well... the Robotech fans were not left behind in plagiarizing Macross either.
(This is my favorite)

[Sandman]

OMG! That is such amateurish work. Academy should be embarrassed to put out such a non-professional product like that. And charging like 3-4 dollars at bat. 

[Seto Kaiba]

37 minutes ago, Ikaruss said:

Well... the Robotech fans were not left behind in plagiarizing Macross either.
(This is my favorite)

Plagiarizing Macross is a freaking hobby for the Robotech fandom.

Most of the sites have mercifully gone thanks to the collapse of Geocities and AltaVista free web hosting services, but it was damn near impossible to find a Robotech RPG supplement site that didn't steal from at least one Macross show or a dozen other anime properties.  RobotechResearch is one of the surviving examples, and it has a pretty substantial section that borrows from early Macross concept art, the FamilySoft Macross games, Macross: Do You Remember Love?, Macross: Flash Back 2012, Advanced Valkyrie, and the Macross Model Hobby Handbook... and it's one of the more subdued examples.

Robotech's fanmade "reference" sites are no better.  The Unofficial Robotech Reference Guide has a fair amount of stuff borrowed from Macross that doesn't appear in Robotech, and its nominal successor site is even worse in that regard and was even straight-up stealing art and entire articles from the Macross Mecha Manual.

[blackconvoy_D01]

I remember first becoming a community member and having a conversation with Gubaba, and he was showing me how you could literally plagerize and put the Robo-tech logo on anything and it would "work" LOL.

[Seto Kaiba]

23 minutes ago, blackconvoy_D01 said:

I remember first becoming a community member and having a conversation with Gubaba, and he was showing me how you could literally plagerize and put the Robo-tech logo on anything and it would "work" LOL.

There was that famous prank by, IIRC, @areaseven, that tricked a great many Robotech fans into thinking Harmony Gold had licensed Astro Plan.

[Dynaman]

I thought I had seen the worst Robotech Comics could be - I was wrong...

 

[blackconvoy_D01]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

There was that famous prank by, IIRC, @areaseven, that tricked a great many Robotech fans into thinking Harmony Gold had licensed Astro Plan.

OMG, YES- LOL

 

[kajnrig]

5 hours ago, tekering said:

Out of morbid curiosity, I looked up Robotech: Breaking Point, an Academy Comics title in 1996... 

I REFUSE to believe that is a legitimate thing that was released for commercial consumption.

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Plagiarizing Macross is a freaking hobby for the Robotech fandom.

Most of the sites have mercifully gone thanks to the collapse of Geocities and AltaVista free web hosting services, but it was damn near impossible to find a Robotech RPG supplement site that didn't steal from at least one Macross show or a dozen other anime properties.

Wh-what? I mean, I get taking stuff from the original show, the two franchises have that as a common starting point, but... but why would Robotech fans take from the Macross sequels? They have Robotech! Why take things from unrelated sequels and risk copyright/trademark infringement when you can just take stuff from your own franchise's sequohhhhhh, that's right...

With all the effort Robotech fans have apparently put into ripping off Macross, I wonder why they don't just, y'know, be Macross fans. Seems like it would be much less effort, and more fulfilling to boot.

[blackconvoy_D01]

18 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

With all the effort Robotech fans have apparently put into ripping off Macross, I wonder why they don't just, y'know, be Macross fans. Seems like it would be much less effort, and more fulfilling to boot.

Many reasons- imho and some observation; 

A) some are not really forward thinking as far as story and character development. If "Rick Hunter" doesnt even get a mention- the series is over.

B) some are cheap and prefer older merch only/ mainly. Or lower end newer merch that breaks. They're not excited about a new VF-31 or the intricacy a similar collectable entails. Hell; HG is still pushing coffee mugs and hats from 2002 at a reduced rate.

C) or it's too hard to break away from what's easy. Macross is super diverse from many facets. Robotech fans couldn't handle the level of range; from 7 to Frontier, etc. Repeat, slight tweak, reuse, repack the same old; stay in the bubble. They say they want something new and different; but do they really? No. I don't think so.

I could go on, but will decide not too.

[jenius]

I think you guys are forgetting that some of these people are just having fun... And if you're just playing around, it's a lot easier to take stuff that's out there and tinker with it then it is to create something new. It's also more fun when you can share things that people in your community will recognize the inspiration of. Yeah, the pros ripping off stuff for comics is full of fail but the fans having fun or even just being ignorant aren't really hurting anything. It's another sign of HG's failure to feed a hungry audience.

[blackconvoy_D01]

2 minutes ago, jenius said:

I think you guys are forgetting that some of these people are just having fun... And if you're just playing around, it's a lot easier to take stuff that's out there and tinker with it then it is to create something new. It's also more fun when you can share things that people in your community will recognize the inspiration of. Yeah, the pros ripping off stuff for comics is full of fail but the fans having fun or even just being ignorant aren't really hurting anything. It's another sign of HG's failure to feed a hungry audience.

But in 2019? It's more of a willful ignorance by the audience now, dont you think? What's HGs real plan for the next 5-10 years except for the same old? I dont see that LAM taking off.

I was really joking in large part of my prior post- but I do believe; whole heartedly that the RT fanbase is somewhat lazy and unengaged in contrast to a Macross or TF fan. It's easier to settle for whats given to you instead of what you really want.

As the customer/ fan; I can settle for the Kitzconcept 1S. Or I can acknowledge deep down that I cannot have a 1S without a strike cannon at/ near that scale; so I have to aim higher and get an Arcadia. But that's me now.

[Chronocidal]

31 minutes ago, jenius said:

I think you guys are forgetting that some of these people are just having fun... And if you're just playing around, it's a lot easier to take stuff that's out there and tinker with it then it is to create something new.

This right here is basically pure, 200 proof distilled essence of Robotech.  The sad part is, no one is considering it "playing around" by this point.  They just outright claim credit for all the things they copy.

Edited July 22, 2019 by Chronocidal

[Old_Nash]

1 hour ago, blackconvoy_D01 said:

OMG, YES- LOL

 

I hope a new animation of Robotech, bur produced by Netflix, like Voltron.

[sketchley]

2 hours ago, blackconvoy_D01 said:

But in 2019? It's more of a willful ignorance by the audience now, dont you think? (...)

That's assuming that everything that you can find on the internet was made in 2019, isn't it?

Seto mentioned the Robotech Research site a few posts back.  That's been around since the early 2000's.  The pages on that site are essentially unchanged since they were first put on their server.  I'm sure many of the other fan things that Jenius and others are referring to are 10 to 20 years old, too.  That's the good and bad thing of the internet: some things tend to stay online forever.

I'm by no means trying to defend Robotech fans here, but it's always good to keep the perspective that some of those fan creations were by people in their teens, and they've long since moved on (not necessarily to Macross, mind you, just to other interests).

. . .

As far as the "professionals" copying the work of others go... that's a major no-no.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, sketchley said:

Seto mentioned the Robotech Research site a few posts back.  That's been around since the early 2000's.  The pages on that site are essentially unchanged since they were first put on their server.  I'm sure many of the other fan things that Jenius and others are referring to are 10 to 20 years old, too.  That's the good and bad thing of the internet: some things tend to stay online forever.

Oh, some of them are old, yeah... but there are others that are BRAND SPANKING NEW.  

The uRRG successor site?  That's new.  Like, made in the last year or two and currently being updated with more "borrowed" stuff new.

The point being that that particular bad habit has been endemic to the Robotech fandom for a long time with no signs of dying out, and seems to be encouraged by Harmony Gold's unconcealed contempt for the original creators and their work.

[Sildani]

23 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The VF-X-4... they can't legally use the VF-4.

It's one of those things the Robotech fandom has been obsessing over for decades.  It only shows up as a model, so naturally they surrounded it with a whirlwind of unfounded speculation until Tommy Yune had it appear in the "From the Stars" miniseries back in ~2001.  Not being a mechanical designer, he dodged the question of making it transform by having it encounter mechanical issues during its brief sortie. 

I have that issue - the dreaded “TRANSPORTATION ERROR.”

[sketchley]

42 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh, some of them are old, yeah... but there are others that are BRAND SPANKING NEW.  

The uRRG successor site?  That's new.  Like, made in the last year or two and currently being updated with more "borrowed" stuff new.

The point being that that particular bad habit has been endemic to the Robotech fandom for a long time with no signs of dying out, and seems to be encouraged by Harmony Gold's unconcealed contempt for the original creators and their work.

I stand corrected on the "site" age point.  However, my point on the "user" age is still relevant, no?

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, sketchley said:

I stand corrected on the "site" age point.  However, my point on the "user" age is still relevant, no?

Ah, I wouldn't bet on that if I were you.

When Harmony Gold compiled that featurette on the Robotech fandom for the special edition of the Shadow Chronicles DVD back in '06, the average Robotech fan was in their mid-to-late 30's.  The fans who were writing these websites were teenagers when the TV series first started its broadcast run in 1985.  When these sites started popping up in 1995, the authors were fans in their mid-20s.  By the time these sites started to catch on c.1999-2001 the authors were turning 30.  The ones that are still plodding away or have recently popped up are being written by the less distinguished members of that same group of fans... who are now on the cusp of being elligibile for an AARP membership.

[Einherjar]

4 hours ago, kajnrig said:

With all the effort Robotech fans have apparently put into ripping off Macross, I wonder why they don't just, y'know, be Macross fans. Seems like it would be much less effort, and more fulfilling to boot.

Are you being rhetorical?  I can't tell, but I thought people over the years have made it clear it's because of her and everything that came about because of her.  Yet they still have to make excuses for her being around at the expense of whatever gritty, serious war story people really want this to be.

[kajnrig]

1 hour ago, Einherjar said:

Are you being rhetorical?

Bit of column A, bit of column B.

Quote

I can't tell, but I thought people over the years have made it clear it's because of her and everything that came about because of her.  Yet they still have to make excuses for her being around at the expense of whatever gritty, serious war story people really want this to be.

So... People love that she brought an end to an intergalactic war through the power of song, they just... hate bringing an end to an intergalactic war through the power of song.

(Okay, seriously, I know I'm just attacking a strawman making fun of Robotech here, but boy is it fun to attack strawmen make fun of Robotech sometimes all the time.)

Edited July 23, 2019 by kajnrig

[Einherjar]

40 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

So... People love that she brought an end to an intergalactic war through the power of song, they just... hate bringing an end to an intergalactic war through the power of song.

A different type of audience love that she brought an end to an intergalactic war through the power of song.  Robotech fans love just the mecha, the epic scope of the conflict, and the pro-military aspects in Macross, but not the idol and anti-war stuff.  The powers that be there probably think so too, but due to basing the most important part of their franchise on someone else's source material, have been forced to keep up this facade that there's a point to her existing at all.  And with that, come up with a rational, maybe scientific, explanation for bringing an end to that intergalactic war that would fit the setting better than some magical mumbo jumbo.  The best they could come up recently is mind control powers and no actual singing talent needed?  She's supposed to be singing something on that page I guess, but from the lyrics I really don't want to know more about it.

Edited July 23, 2019 by Einherjar

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, kajnrig said:

So... People love that she brought an end to an intergalactic war through the power of song, they just... hate bringing an end to an intergalactic war through the power of song.

10 hours ago, Einherjar said:

A different type of audience love that she brought an end to an intergalactic war through the power of song.  Robotech fans love just the mecha, the epic scope of the conflict, and the pro-military aspects in Macross, but not the idol and anti-war stuff. 

Really, I'm not sure it's even that complex.

Yeah, there are some Robotech fans who are dead-set against the idea that a love song could end a space war and are only into it for the setting, the mecha, and the pro-military parts of the story.  They're a relatively small group in the remaining fanbase, though... one with a LOT of overlap with the Southern Cross/Masters Saga fans, which is kind of ironic given that "saga" had the worst mecha, a blatantly incompetent military, and a rather pissingly small space war.

I've found that most Robotech fans don't seem to have any real objection to Macross's more upbeat take on ending a space war with a love song.  Most Robotech fans who actually give it a fair try end up liking Macross more than Robotech, it's just that they've been subjected to decades of Carl Macek (and later Tommy Yune) telling them on no uncertain terms NOT to give Macross a try.  They've been told that Macross is this flawed, inferior series that really wasn't popular in Japan, that the Japanese creators feel Carl Macek's version of the series was far superior to their own, and that all Macross sequels are just imitating Robotech anyway (no, really... these are things Macek was saying well into the 2000s).  That's been so ingrained into the Robotech fandom's mentality by connecting it to same hokum about Robotech's supposed genre- and industry-defining influence that keeps Robotech fans hanging around in hopes that they'll one day get something good from the franchise.

[blackconvoy_D01]

Here we go- how original (meaning the framing by the writer of the article)

http://amp.denofgeek.com/us/books/robotech/282404/robotech-remix-designs-show-off-new-cast-exclusive

 

Edited July 23, 2019 by blackconvoy_D01

[Bolt]

I like the colored version. The B&w line art looks really wrong to me .

They’re gonna keep trying until something sticks to the wall and doesn’t slide off , leaving behind a brown snail trail stain.