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Macross II: Lovers Again (Kickstarter Project) - Animeigo BD release thread


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Anyone suggest sericels as add-ons or extras?

There has only been one set of Macross sericels ever officially produced....they were tied to the old Sega DYRL game and feature a Hikaru and a Minmay as seen in one of the game's awesome animated scenes....

They had a very limited run and command top dollar these day when they show up on auction...

I'd definitely be in for a nice Ishtar or Sylvie...or maybe a VF-2SS...

 

Edited by jvmacross
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30 hours left and sitting pretty at $369,176... just a hair shy of 5x its funding goal. 😀

Loving that Macross II is now officially Animeigo's biggest-ever Kickstarter campaign.

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It's now a little over than $370k. That's significantly better than the Robotech Academy Kickstarter did. I'm highly amused. I'm also happy that I'm getting a UHD copy of this without having to pay extra (who knows, I may even have a UHD tv when it arrives^_^).

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14 hours ago, camk4evr said:

It's now a little over than $370k. That's significantly better than the Robotech Academy Kickstarter did. I'm highly amused. I'm also happy that I'm getting a UHD copy of this without having to pay extra (who knows, I may even have a UHD tv when it arrives^_^).

In fairness, Harmony Gold killed their kickstarter early. We don't know what would've happened in the final hours!

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That clinches it... 4K UHD for all, and Macross II: Lovers Again is the biggest Kickstarter campaign in Animeigo's history. 😀

I definitely agree DYRL? would raise even more... not sure it would get all the way to $1M, but double Macross II's pull at least.

  

On 1/14/2024 at 3:41 AM, camk4evr said:

It's now a little over than $370k. That's significantly better than the Robotech Academy Kickstarter did. I'm highly amused. I'm also happy that I'm getting a UHD copy of this without having to pay extra (who knows, I may even have a UHD tv when it arrives^_^).

Well, yeah... Animeigo's Macross II: Lovers Again Alus Edition Kickstarter was a crowdfunding campaign from a reputable outfit with a proven record of delivering on commitments, conducted in a professional manner, for a product that people actually want, and with sensible backer rewards.

That Kickstarter for The Other Franchise was a first outing from a company with a pretty poor reputation that's infamous for not finishing what it starts, conducted in a terribly smug and arrogant manner, for a product nobody wanted or even asked for, with ill-considered backer rewards... and as if that wasn't self-sabotaging enough, it was all for a property that'd been embroiled in a years-long scandal involving misuse of Kickstarter funds by a long-time licensee who spent years lying about it and ultimately failed to deliver backer rewards and adds-ons and had its license revoked over its failure and the reputational damage it caused.

Comparing the two is kicking down so far that you're in danger of having your leg repurposed as a space elevator on the other side of the planet. :rofl:

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Kinda wild they are not allowed to ship to Japan.

Liking that the best looking valks ever made are getting some well deserved love.

I might get into this Kickstarter for some of the watercolor art addons.

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So, I contributed to this at its most basic level. I guess I was unaware that this would not be arriving in our hands until December 2024. Probably my ignorance of these things, as I had never been on kickstarter before this, but didn’t realize the timeframe. I am super excited that I will get a 4K copy of Macross 2, to go along with my old copy of Animego’s Super Dimension Fortress Macross that they did……

Twich

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1 hour ago, twich said:

So, I contributed to this at its most basic level. I guess I was unaware that this would not be arriving in our hands until December 2024. Probably my ignorance of these things, as I had never been on kickstarter before this, but didn’t realize the timeframe. I am super excited that I will get a 4K copy of Macross 2, to go along with my old copy of Animego’s Super Dimension Fortress Macross that they did……

Twich

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing that it initially had a planned release of March if basic goals were met, but they stated that would extend if more funding was reached in order to add in features.  Now that 4k and dub and all the other goodies are funded, it's going to take a much longer time to make/add them.

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Eh, Rome wasn't built in a day... not even the imitation version in Culture Park.

I'd rather Animeigo take their time and do an exemplary job than have it ASAP.

Edited by Seto Kaiba
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Since it finished at over 400K, Robert indicated that it had reached a next level stretch goal, but did not specify if this goal would be a physical or digital item.

I'm not sure what I would want, but I know for sure I would want a physical item. Digital items tend to vanish.

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It is nice to see them have a 4K release. Strange to see the western version being possibly better than the Japanese version. I wish that all future Macross releases will be in 4K. But personally, I would much rather see the addition of HDR than 4K.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/18/2023 at 6:21 PM, MKT said:

Many moons ago in the mid-90s I came across by chance and picked up a Macross soundtrack CD. The album contained tracks mostly from TV / DYRL / FB2012, but there were a few extra unfamiliar tracks in there which sounded really good and eventually I got more hooked to them than the songs from the aforementioned Macross titles. The album was obviously entirely in Japanese, so I would not know the name of the songs and only go by the track # for playback reference. 

I think it was only within the past few years that I found out these extra tracks actually came from Macross II, so it was a pleasant surprise as my only other touch point to Macross II up till then was the old RPG books. Eventually I watched the anime, and although it was ultimately average & falling short as a whole, there were still nice things going for it but I suspect it's mostly due to individual nostalgia elements rather it being a great story haha.

Nice to know the Kickstarter for it is now more than a massive success. 

Macross Song Collection? https://www.discogs.com/release/5626199-Various-超時空要塞マクロス-ソングコレクション That was my first official Japanese Macross CD. Macross II definitely had A1 grade music to match Iijima perfect pop. Macross 7 had good music but imo wasn't in the tradition of Macross before it obviously.

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I remember drooling at the US Renditions ads in the back of probably Protoculture Addicts (?) in about '92 or '93 for for MII on VHS subtitled. I had no way of knowing what exactly this was. A couple years later I got the Kiseki releases dubbed, about the only way to see it in Australia coz US fansub releasers weren't doing it obviously and importing the official US tapes was crazy money for a student..(despite my US Renditions membership card which I had spent stupid money for me at the time on) Holy crap that was a bad dub but I could see the beauty of M2 and Big West's true vision for the franchise..the mechanical design is incredible, original and non-Kawamori but shows a true lineage with the original show. Then you had my favourite aspect of the look and feeling of Macross, Mikimoto, fully present. Story wasn't the greatest but a more worthy sequel than anything that came after imho. This opinion has made me a pariah but after playing the games that also make up the Big West canon and witnessing the modern Macross Kawamori controlled shows I feel reassured in my adherence to the BW way of continuing the story.  Just my opinion. Enjoy your Kawamori-verse, like modern G. Lucas, I will not be partaking. 

I won't get into this release. I don't really know what a "kickstarter" is anyway and I have the show in both the CLV box set and the CAV individual releases so don't know what I would be missing, I pretty much have a perfect collection of them anyway. 

If you haven't seen the show or don't have a laserdisc player I would recommend this set however, it's wildly different to what came after in '94/'95 and imho more in-line with what Macross was to many people (including myself) at that time. 

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5 hours ago, Space Casual Life said:

Macross Song Collection? https://www.discogs.com/release/5626199-Various-超時空要塞マクロス-ソングコレクション That was my first official Japanese Macross CD. Macross II definitely had A1 grade music to match Iijima perfect pop. Macross 7 had good music but imo wasn't in the tradition of Macross before it obviously.

Exactly right! :good:

That album actually formed part of my core CD collection to listen in rotation for many years. I procured it during college years, it then followed me into uni, and ended up living in my car's glove box for a great many years of working life until I made the full transition into digital library for my music. Thereafter the CD was tossed into storage & somewhat forgotten. :ph34r:

The album continues to surprise though. Something I read very recently (only a few months ago!) suddenly made me remember of it and I was compelled to dig it out. To my surprise, my copy is a bootleg! It was made by SM Records, an infamous Taiwanese company that makes extraordinary high-quality bootlegs that are pretty much indistinguishable from the originals to the average user. The booklet, the inserts, the colors & printing can look even more legit than some other licensed CDs, down to the robustness of the casing. What is different though, is that the BigWest Victor logo isn't there, and the SM Records logo is plastered somewhere instead. 

I actually heard of SM Records & their exploits years before, just that I totally didn't expect my Macross album to be actually one. This is because it was the only album I ever purchased at my local Tower Records then and paid what would be full retail price of an original album. :unsure: In my mind it couldn't get any more legit than that, but yet....

Still, after this revelation I didn't remain perturbed for long. I now regard this CD to be a cherished Macross collectible for what it gave me, perhaps in the same way as how KO 1/55 chunkies are fondly regarded by some. :p


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MSCBackNRMnt.jpg.cc65179606e9a26e4a497fec68bc65d5.jpg

Edited by MKT
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Holy Shi*t? A US Tower Records sold you an SM release? I used to pick those up in Chinatown Sydney at dodgy shops and at gaming (RPGs, wargames, Bridge Commander and ASL for those that don't understand the word "gaming" in a '90s context.) conventions in the '90s in Australia. Yeah they were amazing to just have the music (and the quality of the inserts and also the music (I guess just straight PCM dupes?) was good, but the REAL sh*t was always the original Japanese releases. I remember ordering Macross Song Collection through my local music retailer, Impact Records in Canberra Australia. You could order any CD existing in print on the planet...for a price.. It was reasonably legendary. Sydney heads used to come down to Canberra just to buy heavy metal CDs from there. Anyways, Macross Song Collection, the original Japanese Victor release  ended up costing me about AUD$70. I was earning about AUD$100 a week stacking shelves a supermarket nights while studying then, so a significant investment. The SM version probably sounded the same, but when I put that official Victor CD into my player I felt so much pride...still got it on my shelf. Still feel that pride when I play it. Not acquired on Y!jp or evilBay or any of that sh*t...

Edited by Space Casual Life
Maybe heads don't know what "gaming" was in the '90s?
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Oh man, you got me nostalgic. Pulled my Victor '95 release (Canberra Impact Records acquired) off the shelf and took some pics. 

R0025642.jpg

R0025643.jpg

R0025644.jpg

SM was cool but I trashed all of 'em about 1999 in pursuit of "purity".

 

 

Edited by Space Casual Life
pic wouldn't upload
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1 hour ago, Space Casual Life said:

Holy Shi*t? A US Tower Records sold you an SM release? I used to pick those up in Chinatown Sydney at dodgy shops and at gaming (RPGs, wargames, Bridge Commander and ASL for those that don't understand the word "gaming" in a '90s context.) conventions in the '90s in Australia. Yeah they were amazing to just have the music (and the quality of the inserts and also the music (I guess just straight PCM dupes?) was good, but the REAL sh*t was always the original Japanese releases. I remember ordering Macross Song Collection through my local music retailer, Impact Records in Canberra Australia. You could order any CD existing in print on the planet...for a price.. It was reasonably legendary. Sydney heads used to come down to Canberra just to buy heavy metal CDs from there. Anyways, Macross Song Collection, the original Japanese Victor release  ended up costing me about AUD$70. I was earning about AUD$100 a week stacking shelves a supermarket nights while studying then, so a significant investment. The SM version probably sounded the same, but when I put that official Victor CD into my player I felt so much pride...still got it on my shelf. Still feel that pride when I play it. Not acquired on Y!jp or evilBay or any of that sh*t...

AUD70? :blink: That's really some crazy import pricing haha.. If I'm not wrong, that would cost about 3 times a normal CD album during that time in Australia. But I guess sometimes it's also the journey & sweat experienced to acquiring it that's more than the value of the item itself. :) 

 

1 hour ago, Space Casual Life said:

Oh man, you got me nostalgic. Pulled my Victor '95 release (Canberra Impact Records acquired) off the shelf and took some pics. 

R0025642.jpg

R0025643.jpg

R0025644.jpg

SM was cool but I trashed all of 'em about 1999 in pursuit of "purity".

 

 

Thanks for posting these images mate. Interesting.. I can compare how an original Victor vs SM look like now. Even the CD itself is printed to look almost the same. My CD tray could have been white instead of green though - I vaguely remember it may have cracked a long time ago and so I replaced it (Those prongs in the middle holding the CD down are always the first to break).
 

MSCCDNRMnt.jpg.2444947ccdd60a3d77196571dcda4494.jpg

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8 hours ago, MKT said:

AUD70? :blink: That's really some crazy import pricing haha.. If I'm not wrong, that would cost about 3 times a normal CD album during that time in Australia. But I guess sometimes it's also the journey & sweat experienced to acquiring it that's more than the value of the item itself. :) 

 

Thanks for posting these images mate. Interesting.. I can compare how an original Victor vs SM look like now. Even the CD itself is printed to look almost the same. My CD tray could have been white instead of green though - I vaguely remember it may have cracked a long time ago and so I replaced it (Those prongs in the middle holding the CD down are always the first to break).
 

MSCCDNRMnt.jpg.2444947ccdd60a3d77196571dcda4494.jpg

Yeah most CDs were AUD$30 on the shelf then. If you wanted a special import the staff would lay out a massive binder with THOUSANDs of pages with tiny lines listing hundreds of thousands of titles. They'd find a code. About 3-6 months later they'd give you call or you'd check and they'd have it. I don't know how much they charged for US and European imports but some of the rarer ones on the shelf were often $50. Japanese imports were always about $70. I got in 4 Macross related CDs over a few years this way and I still have them. Other than travel to Japan you had no other choice if you wanted the real ones. Chinatown in Sydney had places with SM for about $10. I had about a dozen I think, standouts were a Miason Ikkoku OST and a Ghibli collection.

It's funny that some of the Japanese imports I got can now be had for basically $1 each and wages are 5 times higher. So I paid 35000% more than I would today! Of course then housing, food and utilities were much cheaper compared to income then too. I liked that world because you really had to consider your hobby purchases more and you treasured them more. I find the easy and cheap access to everything all the time now  to be overwhelming, wasteful and confusing, So I live like I'm just rich in the '90s which is much easier to do in 2024. Last year I bought a TOTL Laserdisc player that retailed in the late '80s for Y280,000 (About Y328,000 today) for about AUD$700 fully landed and operational. In the '90s the original price would have been about 4 months of my wages or, for a very well paid person then about a month. Today the cost to own the player is about 3 days wage for most Australians. Anyway, sometimes I can't believe how much times have changed.  

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Did anyone get the MADOX-01 re-release? How was the grain? I look at some 4K "restorations" of scenes from DYRL? on Youtube and they look horrible to me, clean, flat and soulless. I believe theatrical anime can be restored well though as it was originally seen at unlimited resolution on a massive screen. Grain scrubbing and edge cleanup is NOT good restoration for anything though! 

However, I don't get the point of restoring OVAs that, although shot on film, were never intended to be seen above 425 lines of horizontal resolution. The creators at the time knew what the end product would come out as and I believe that would have informed their work. To release something as it was never intended is a bit like putting a Lamborghini body on a Toyota Carolla, pointless.

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So, I was sent the same email that was posted above about the Animego Macross 2 Kickstarter and I broke down and upgraded to the basic->basic plus artbook for an additional $32 USD.  I can not be sure that this will not be the last thing that we get to see as fans of Macross 2, so I thought that this was worth the extra $32.  I am looking forward to receiving this, since it wont come out until December 2024, I will probably have forgotten all about it and this will be a welcome surprise!  I hope that Bandai or Arcadia sees the interest in this and makes a DX Chogokin VF-2SS

Twich

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It'll be interesting to see what makes it into the artbook.

I'd assume they have access to all of the production line art that's been published in B-ClubEntertainment BibleThis is Animation Special, and the like... but IIRC they were also trying to get ahold of art from western-only products like the Palladium Books RPG and possibly the non-canon Macross II: the Micron Conspiracy comic.  I hope they were successful there.  Say what you will about the game system (or the publisher), but those old Palladium Books RPGs did have some lovely cover art.

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8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It'll be interesting to see what makes it into the artbook.

I'd assume they have access to all of the production line art that's been published in B-ClubEntertainment BibleThis is Animation Special, and the like... but IIRC they were also trying to get ahold of art from western-only products like the Palladium Books RPG and possibly the non-canon Macross II: the Micron Conspiracy comic.  I hope they were successful there.  Say what you will about the game system (or the publisher), but those old Palladium Books RPGs did have some lovely cover art.

Palladium Robotech RPG books were basically a stand in for the line art collections I couldn't acquire in the 90s. I remember photocopying the entire rulebook from a friend's older brother at the public library in the late '80s before I got my own copy. I loved those books. I need to recollect them. I have no idea what happened to them. I know I had Robotech, Macross II, Macross II Deck plans, Invid Invasion and Robotech II the Sentinels. My buddies and I used to play  lunchtimes in the library in about year 8. We went rogue from the UN Spacy, broke off from our squadron on a patrol and headed to Japan. We got their factories to produce copies of our Valks and then formed a private army of Japanese piloted Valks. From there we attacked the JSDF and took over Japan. Then we started to attack the world. It ended after about a year with us being the rulers of the world! We had chicks too. Hot ones..! 

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