And when I say MACROSS, I mean MACROSS!

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

(hoping to get the tags right this time...)

---

I have some problems with the plotting; the last 8 or so episodes (after the Zentradi fleet is wiped out) seem very anticlimactic to me. I mean, I think I know what the creators were doing, storywise, but it just seemed like a long, drawn-out denoument that really didn't work well.

---

That's largely because the creators got an unexpected last-minute extension to the series run. "Ai wa Nagareru" was supposed to be the final episode.
(Well, it's more complex than that... but not by much.)
And you should definitely see the movie, for three reasons:
-the animation is much better (although the plot makes even less sense)
-The title tune, "Ai Oboete Imasu Ka" (Do You Remember Love?) is a far niftier armada-stopper than AwN
(Do you remember the moment
When our eyes met for the first time?
Do you remember the moment
When we touched and held each other?
It was a time we'd remember
That would last beyond forever
I love you so...)
and finally,
-Hikaru gets to slap Minmei. Who at that point really REALLY deserves it.
...And about Hikaru: given that he grew up in a Flying Circus, with his father and Roy as mentors, I can buy the mad skillz thing. Especially since he's at best only the no. 3 human pilot.
As for the other sequelage:
M-II: Interesting... but not great.
Macross +: Coooooooool. Freaky tunes, man.
Macross 7: I don't know about the rest, but the first eight episodes are highly amusing... except for the whole Max vs. Miria thing. I really don't like where their relationship went, and I hope it was repaired by series end.
Macross 0: Has anyone seen this "prequel" yet?
--Sam
"This letter is clearly the result of too much spinning."

[offsides]

---

M-II: Interesting... but not great.

---

I actually like MII, but with the understanding that it's _not_ canon. After all, it has some pretty cool mecha (I really like the VF-2JA design, and the Monster II is just un-f*cking-real. Not to mention the Metal Siren...).
And it has one of my all time favorite anime quotes: "The fate of the Earth is in our hands. Beats sittin' in jail!"
Offsides
Drunkard's Walk Forum Moderator and Prereader At Large

[Bob Schroeck]

Sounds like Peg and I still have a hobby...

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Murmur the Fallen]

Goddamn, could the animation have been any worse? Minmay never looks the same two shots in a row (and her open mouth is often a pink blotch, no teeth or anything indicating an "inside"), items strobe through two different colors for no apparent reason, eyes change color or turn into black blobs.
[Yeah, the animation was pretty spotty a lot of times; the filler eps. were pretty bad, and they must have used the same exploding zentradi ship at least ten times.]
I now understand the genesis of the term "bridge bunny". And the crew complement on the bridge became such a joke to Peg and me that the one time there was a male besides the captain stationed there, Peg and I turned to each other and did the Lena Hyena "A maaayaan! It's a maaaayaaaan!" bit.
[. . . Oh, sweet Jesus. Yes, they were the original bridge bunnies. Oh, quick note; they actually hooked up with the three zentradi spies. What weird couples.]
Minmay's seiyuu does indeed have a nice voice, and the songs are quite lovely (though Peg and I got thoroughly sick of "My Boyfriend's A Pilot"). But I find I must agree with the seventeeth law of anime physics (The Law of Transient Romantic Unreliability): Minmei is a bimbo. Then again, she's not even quite 18 when the series ends, so you can excuse a lot based on her being a confused teenager.
[Yes, many was the time that Minmay need a good slapping, especially in the last storyline. Not that hanging around Kaifun made things easier.]
I have some problems with the plotting; the last 8 or so episodes (after the Zentradi fleet is wiped out) seem very anticlimactic to me. I mean, I think I know what the creators were doing, storywise, but it just seemed like a long, drawn-out denoument that really didn't work well.
[I suppose that anything after seeing the world scoured and Boldoza's ship blow up and the Macross settling down would be anticlimactic . . . but I think it also showed how there are problems even after the Happy Ending.]
Hikaru was competing with neutronium there for a while.
[Hikaru's the romantic lead. He's not supposed to be perceptive in any way.]
Milia and Max: "Behold the power of a baby!" I joked to Peggy that the Zentradi ran because Komilia needed changing and they didn't want to be stuck with the job.
[Just another Cultural Attack. I guess for a people who have reproduced via big cloning tubes for over a hundred thousand years, the idea of impregnation and live births would be damn freakish.]
Anyway, despite what this might sound like, I did in fact enjoy it. Now I'm curious about the various sequels...
[groovy.]
Later, it's time for work.
-- Bob

And you should definitely see the movie, for three reasons:
-the animation is much better (although the plot makes even less sense)
[Yes, the animation WAS better. You remember the ep. where the world gets destroyed and the macross beats up the zentradi fleet? Imagine a couple hours of that. On the minus side, you get a much more overwrought "romantic" story and the battle of the sexes taken to a whole new level. Oh, and you thought Misa was disgustingly domestic there at the end? That ain't nothing to what she and hikaru do in the movie.]
-The title tune, "Ai Oboete Imasu Ka" (Do You Remember Love?) is a far niftier armada-stopper than AwN
[It's great, but the singing voice actress of Mylene does a great version of it, too.]
and finally,
-Hikaru gets to slap Minmei. Who at that point really REALLY deserves it.
[and the world cheers.]
...And about Hikaru: given that he grew up in a Flying Circus, with his father and Roy as mentors, I can buy the mad skillz thing. Especially since he's at best only the no. 3 human pilot.
[Oh, yes, and when Roy dies the stupidest macho death EVER, Hikaru goes up to number two. But Max is a very high first. He is, after all, a genius.]
As for the other sequelage:
M-II: Interesting... but not great.
[The story lost interest for me two episodes in.]
Macross +: Coooooooool. Freaky tunes, man.
[Oooh, yeah. I just wish that the movie version had kept that kick ass opening scene where the valkyries fight the zentradi. You really get to see the advantages of being a jet and a giant robot.]
Macross 7: I don't know about the rest, but the first eight episodes are highly amusing... except for the whole Max vs. Miria thing. I really don't like where their relationship went, and I hope it was repaired by series end.
[Uhh . . . kind of. It's never explicitly stated that they get back together, but you can see a lot of affection between them. And, not to be too much of a spoiler, but Milia looks great in the captain's uniform.
It seems that I'm one of the few that really liked Macross 7 all the way through. Sure, they used a lot (A LOT) of stock footage, but I really appreciated the slow character growth interspersed with very strange kaiju alien fighting. And you really believe in the mystical power of music. You see music represented as both a way of freeing the mind and as a propoganda tool. And what I really liked about it was that for the first time, the macross love triangle is not so one sided (Minmay is whiney and Guld is a jerk until just before he dies) and is never resolved.]
Macross 0: Has anyone seen this "prequel" yet?
[I've seen the first episode. My god. It's fantastic. The use of CG is not at all distracting, and you really get to see just how COOL being in a transforming mecha is. It takes place during the Unification War, and you see a new character design for Roy Fokker (still voiced by Kamiya "Mendou" Akira, thank god) without the big hair. The VF-0 Valkyries are stubbier than the VF-1 but they still kick ass.
Oh, and romance on a tropical island.]
--Sam
"This letter is clearly the result of too much spinning."
-murmur the fallen
who will scream if Titanite ever meets Doug. Seriously, that's just wrong, dude.

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

...hey, Bob, you were talking about getting Doug a giant robot?
Might I recommend the VF-19 "Kai" Fire Valkyrie? With its guitar-neck controller, Speaker Pod "missiles," and overall fire-engine paint job, Basara's custom ride from Macross 7 just screams "Loon!" Of course, he might want to have some actual weapon systems put in... but keep those pods; having an armor-piercing stereo system is always a good thing.
...Roy is back? *angelic choir music* Coooooool.
Akira Kamiya. Is there anything he can't do? Build androids, pilot giant robots, make people's heads explode... (I want to see Skull One use the Hundred Crack Fist on a Zentradi, just once.)

---

who will scream if Titanite ever meets Doug. Seriously, that's just wrong, dude.

---

And what, may I (on behalf of SME) ask, is wrong with that?
--Sam
"I never thought I'd say this to you, but... SPOON!"

[Star Ranger4]

Personally, I dunno, Lurker. Maybe they're afraid of them running into each other in an episode titled "Macross Bogosity"?
On a totaly related aside, next time you write to the other founders of SME, pass this mesage along willya??

MORE!! MORE MORE MORE!!!!"I was an Otaku before those kids came along and changed the meaning of the word."
-- HM "Howling Mad" Wilson to more than one team-mate.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[drakensis]

The official continuity for Macross is kind of odd (the notion that the original series is how if happened, but the movie is what it looked like AND the movie is a movie from the actual universe being a particuylarly interesting bit of handwaving).
I like Macross 7 quite a lot, althopugh the animations is a bit weak (it's better in the Dynamite OAVs) and the movie is a ton of laughs (e.g. Basara crashes in such a way as to pop his cockpit and get's thrown out of the valkyrie, narrowly avoiding singing soprano for the rest of his life).
The 'triangle' is suitably more complicated though - all three are at one time or another shown to have other 'suitors/interests'. And the bridge bunnies have their moments as well, particularly in the OAVs and Movie. (Both are dating the same pilot).
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Bob Schroeck]

---

who will scream if Titanite ever meets Doug. Seriously, that's just wrong, dude.

---

Don't read DW10 when it comes out, then, unless you're a big fan of Ed Becerra's Legion stories, too.


-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

---

...hey, Bob, you were talking about getting Doug a giant robot?

---

I was? Where would he keep it?

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

---

Personally, I dunno, Lurker. Maybe they're afraid of them running into each other in an episode titled "Macross Bogosity"?

---

"Maximum Bogosity", maybe... but that's not the plan at the moment. DW10's working title is currently "Walking Into The Storm". It's fully plotted out, but Ed and I haven't gotten our acts together enough to write more than about 30K of it. When we do manage to finish it, it's be a hell of a rollercoaster ride...
(Oh, and we have permission to use Titantite, although we got it so long ago we'll probably have to contact Mark Latus again to renew it...)

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

---

The official continuity for Macross is kind of odd (the notion that the original series is how if happened, but the movie is what it looked like AND the movie is a movie from the actual universe being a particuylarly interesting bit of handwaving).

---

If that means what it looks like it means, that's so weird...

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Murmur the Fallen]

Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The official continuity for Macross is kind of odd (the notion that the original series is how if happened, but the movie is what it looked like AND the movie is a movie from the actual universe being a particuylarly interesting bit of handwaving).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If that means what it looks like it means, that's so weird...
-- Bob

It is a bit weird.
Here's how it goes: There's the Real World (hereinafter referred to as RW), then there's the Macross World (MW). In MW, there was a movie made entitled Do You Remember Love, which was a historical drama that told the story of Space War I, which in RW was the movie Macross: Do You Remember Love, which was the movie version of the television series Superdimensional Fortress Macross.
In MW, Do You Remember Love is a historical drama in much the same way as Patton is in the RW. However, the historical accuracy of it in the MW is somewhere between Pocohantas and Band of Brothers here in the RW. It has "real" historical characters, doing some of the things done in history, but it's mostly just a mish-mash that must have pissed off a lot of history-buffs in MW.
But, here in the RW, the character designs and mecha designs were so much better quality (arguably, by me that is) than the television series', that it was decided that they would be the official designs for all future Macross projects. A bit of retroactive continuity (herein after referred to as retcon by all geek comicbook fans, or even being Byrned by the particularly geeky and bitter) here. So in Macross Plus, when we see the SDF-1 Macross, it's the design from the movie. As well, when we once again see Exedol in Macross 7, his character design is the one from the movie.
Yet all events are as depicted in the television series.
So, in summary: Movie Designs, Television continuity, The Movie is a Movie in MW.
But here's something that might be interesting: for most people in the MW, they know the events of the Movie because it was very popular, to the degree that when a new movie/t.v. special is being made within the MW that they used the storyline from the Movie (e.g. Hikaru takes Minmay for a ride in his Valkyrie).
-murmur the fallen
Who says: "Byrned? Oh, I kill me."

[offsides]

And then of course there's Macross II, which is unofficially officially a Parallel Universe... Here's one of the better pages I've found explaining the continuity cycle, including a decent image to go with it...
www.steelfalcon.com/Macro...uity.shtml
I'm a bit partial to the site in general as I was involved in some of the HTML-izing of it way back when it was still active, but that's just a side note
Offsides
Drunkard's Walk Forum Moderator and Prereader At Large

[Logan Darklighter]

Okay... It's official. My brain hurts. I think I'll go watch some nice, safe Matsumoto. At least he makes no pretense of fitting it all together... ^_^;;
-Logan
-----------------
"So there I was, lying flat on my back, with my face pressed into the dirt, thinking, "Wait a minute, something's not rig..."
-----------------

[Bob Schroeck]

---

Okay... It's official. My brain hurts.

---

Moi brine 'urts!
You know, between the explanation here and the website Offsides linked to, I think I took SAN damage...

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[classicdrogn]

---

You know, between the explanation here and the website Offsides linked to, I think I took SAN damage...

---

The "series events, movie designs, movie is a movie IC" evolution is a nice trick, but for sheer number of official continuities under a single name it's hard to beat Transformers. Let's see if I can remember them all...
* US cartoon, G1/G2
* US comics, G1/G2 (though how well the G2 comics really fit with G1 is open to question...)
* US comics, Generations and War Within
* CG Beast Wars/Beast Machines (again, questionable, but official)
* US Beast Wars comics (at least, I think there were... official ones, I mean, not just fancomics or con material)
* UK comics
* Japanese G1 cartoons, diverging after TF:TMP - 2010, Headmasters, Victory, Zone, all as coherent as sequels as any other kids' show
* Japanese Beast Wars post-Transmetals are fairly obviously alternate universes rather than continuations, that's BW Second and BW Neo, each their own world.
* Car Robots/Robots in Disguise cartoon
* TF: Armada cartoon
* TF: Armada comics (the ones packaged with the toys)
That's only twelve, so I've forgotten one. I do remember that anything in the G1 comics that crosses over with other comics besides GI Joe officially does not exist, as those titles are supposed to be seperate from the rest if the Marvel Universe.
If you count tech specs, then you have US G1/G2, UK-only G1, and Japan G1, but I'm not at all sure about which later toy lines still had a character blurb and when it was switched to a generic series blurb like they are for Armada. At least part of Beast Wars still had character descriptions...

Anyway, my point here aside from showing that Macross doesn't have it so bad as all that in terms of continuity complexity is that for a proposed Transformers step, you're as well off to pick your favorite character designs for good guys and bad guys, call them by the faction names that most of them fit with, and wing it, as trying to closely match any particular prexisting interpretartion.
Dave VanDomelen has compared Transformers to Greek Mythology - you know the major characters, you know the basic storyline, but the details will change from one play to another. Here Optimus Prime (or is that Convoy?) is a big red tractor cab with a box trailer, here he's a fire truck, here he's a flatbed artillery piece, here he's a gorilla. Here Megatron is a handgun, here he's a tank, here he's a dinosaur, here he's a dragon. For all of them, bad guys attacked the good guys in space, causing them both to crash on earth, and now the good guys are trying to stop the bad guys from gathering the resources to escape and take over the galaxy.
- CD

[Murmur the Fallen]

Doug and Transformers? shades of UF . . .
Anyway, two notes:
The NEW AMERICAN Transformers has its own continuity, wherein the G1 storyline is kept for the most part but the backstory is changed and there is an obvious divergence before the movie, since the ark blew up and they were all in comas . . .
U.S. Beast Wars/Beast Machines were set up as sequels, since all those characters were not the "real" Optimus Prime, Megatron, etc. but their . . . successors, I suppose. (The only two original transformers that showed up and spoke were Starscream, Soundwave and Vector Sigma) but they also made references to the marvel comic, Primus being the big one.
But I digress . . .
-Murmur the Fallen
who, even though not a huge transfan, did get a kick out of optimus prime and optimus primal staring at each other when primal took the matrix.

[Bob Schroeck]

You know, I never did see any Transformers, at all.
Despite Ed Becerra and others urging me strongly. One of these days, I suppose.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.