And when I say MACROSS, I mean MACROSS!

[Murmur the Fallen]

Okay, I liked Jack McKinney's Robotech books--I did.
But, c'mon, you know that they made Robotech a lot better than it was. Look at all the Robotech fanfic out there, a lot of it is based on the McKinney books. Not the actual series.
And frankly there is just no comparison between Macross and Robotech.
mostly because the songs are better.
Okay, let's get to the brass tacks:
Macross is better than Robotech: macross saga. Dubbing was awful. Especially the songs. Good god, the SONGS! Everyone knows that "To be in love" is only to be used in the defense of the Wedge from hordes of hateful frat boys, that's it!
Macross Plus versus Robotech: Southern Cross--is this even a fair fight? No; okay, how about Macross II, the redheaded stepchild of Macross who is not acknowledged as an official part of the timeline--. . . while I despised Macross II, it's still better than Southern Cross. I mean, jesus, they had to cobble together a story with more holes than . . . than . . . than Macross II to get it to hobble through to Mospeada.
Macross 7 versus Robotech: Mospeada--okay, since i've never seen mospeada, i'll bow out.
But, out of the first two, it blows away the competition!

[cpt kangarooski]

No, the songs are pretty terrible, no matter what language it's in. Minmei is universally annoying.
Macross Zero looks excellent so far. I'm eagerly awaiting the next episode.
However, I don't see a place for any part of Macross as a DW step. Doug strikes me as either being too powerful (e.g. ramming into a ship at relativistic speeds with 'I am a Pioneer') or not enough at all, unless they decide to give him a training course in using VFs. After all, Doug is a warrior, but he is not a commonplace soldier. He might work as a commando of some kind, but there's not much call for that during the first part of Macross.
(Likewise, I like Hikaru no Go, but a superhero in the competitive world of go just doesn't seem like it'll work well. Also he might not know how to play.)

[Murmur the Fallen]

Okay, Minmei the character is pretty annoying, but her songs are all right, sometimes even beautiful.
And, I don't know, some of the Proto-Devlin could give Doug a run for his money (the Macross 7 era, which is when I think it should be set in), but even then I'm not sure why every time Doug sets foot on a world, there has to be some sort of conflict. If he arrived after the Proto-devlin war, Doug could just sit back and relax until he leaves.

[Valles]

---

If he arrived after the Proto-devlin war, Doug could just sit back and relax until he leaves.

---

But that wouldn't make a very interesting story.
On the other hand, the way you've phrased that somehow gives me the idea of having Doug as a sort of war correspondant - a reporter doing, say, a weekly program about the course of the war and the lives and viewpoints of the major players...
Blessed be.
-n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, I dunno about a correspondant during Macross 7 (which I really disliked), but perhaps he could be more or less out of the big picture in an out of the way part of Earth. I'm basically thinking of stranding him in the SE Asian or Sub-Saharan African countryside after the big Zentraedi attack... a sort of 'Magnificent One' kind of thing. Between a language barrier and the remoteness, it might be some time before he realized that there is at least a decent amount of civilization out there.

[Murmur the Fallen]

. . . yeah, kind of doubt that much of anything survived on Earth after the Zentradi bombardment. Maybe some isolated pockets, like four of five people in deep bunkers somewhere, but they'd probably died out before they could reach the Macross. But that's neither here nor there and certainly that's a moot point, really.
I guess I would be more interested in the character interactions than how a fight between Doug and the Proto-Devlin would go (although, come to that, I wonder if one of them would try to take over his body because it's so versatile, but discover that it's filled with anima spiritia or somesuch).
I would like to see what would happen when Doug hears some Fire Bomber songs for the first time.

[cpt kangarooski]

Oh, I strongly disagree.
I know that there's some claims that the post-bombardment human population outside of the actual inhabitants of the Macross were created through cloning... but I just don't see that as being directly supported in the canon anime AFAIK, or as feasible.
The Bodol fleet attacks in Feb/Mar 2010. But there appears to be a fairly widespread population by late 2011. It's more than could be accounted for from the local population, and I find it difficult to believe that Zentraedi cloning processes could be so readily adapted to humans, particularly with regards to education.
Additionally, I don't think that the Bodol fleet would've just attacked the entire Earth, but would instead have concentrated on cities, industrial areas, and (I'd imagine very well hardened) military facilities. This would tend to result in a lessened attack on rural inhabitants, particularly low-tech ones with population centers not easily visible from space.
If we do discount a massive human cloning project, and we consider the large populations of Earth, Eden, and the Macross 7 as seen in Macross Plus and Macross 7 some thirty years later (and remembering that there are a lot of colonization ships and colonies set up) then it seems likely that at least a hundred million people, perhaps more, survived the bombardment and disruption of civilization.
('Course if we really wanted to have fun, we'd have Macross v. Orguss

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, another one I have to see and appreciate first. Yes, Macross is like unto a legend among anime fans, and yes, Carl Macek's name shall be cursed forevermore, but I haven't seen any of it and so I haven't a clue what you're talking about.
Except for Minmei's singing. Somehow, I know all about that. And I'm pretty sure I don't want it in Doug's helmet.

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

[Murmur the Fallen]

Okay, another one I have to see and appreciate first. Yes, Macross is like unto a legend among anime fans, and yes, Carl Macek's name shall be cursed forevermore, but I haven't seen any of it and so I haven't a clue what you're talking about.
Except for Minmei's singing. Somehow, I know all about that. And I'm pretty sure I don't want it in Doug's helmet.

[Now, see, THIS is why Macek's name should be cursed forevermore: Macross's Minmay (or Minmei) had a great singing voice--Maria Iijima, who actually wrote the many if not all the songs that she sung in the series. I still get choked up when the Macross lands on Earth and "My beautiful place" is playing. And "My boyfriend's a pilot now" is just a fun, mindless little pop song.
The dub is just awful. This is true. I know it. It should be avoided at all costs.
but I have to admit, I'm surprised that you never saw the original Macross. 'course, I waited nigh on four years on Animeigo's cursed pre-order waiting list for the Macross box set. but it was worth it.
Anyway: Macross deserves to be a classic, but doesn't deserve to have the reputation for bad music that Macek painted onto it.]

[Bob Schroeck]

You gotta understand, my anime history comes in three stages:
1) Middle 1960s. Astroboy. Gigantor. Speed Racer. Eighth Man. What, you mean they were made in Japan?
2) 1979-1980. Wow, that Starblazers show is like no other cartoon I've ever seen. Too bad there's nothing else like it anywhere.
3) 1990ish to present. Who watches American stuff anymore?
In the third stage, I was mostly started on farces and other light fare, and that stayed my primary preference for a long while. Robotech/Macross/whatever fell between the cracks and outside of my tastes whenever it was around. That's the sad truth.

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

[offsides]

OK, I have the AnimEigo Macross Box Set (the original, subtitled). It's not American, so it should fit your genre parameters Lemme know if you're interested.
Offsides
Drunkard's Walk Forum Moderator and Prereader At Large

[Bob Schroeck]

---

Lemme know if you're interested

---

You betcha. If only to prove to Peggy that I don't just watch stuff where the cute girls outnumber the male lead 5 to one or more.

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

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

I still have a bunch of the novels... they're okay, but I really wish Brian Daley hadn't wasted ten years of his life on them. We could have had more Floyt-and-Fitzhugh adventures, or GammaLaw, or who knows what else...
(For anyone who doesn't already know, "Jack McKinney" was a pseudonym for the team of Daley and James R. Luceno. Luceno continued the series alone for a while after Daley's death.)
Now there's a thought... Doug in the Third Breath, dodging Langstretch and investigating Precursor relics...
--Sam
"People will want to kidnap us, kill us..."
"Or -interview- us! Run, Ho, RUN!"

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

>2) 1979-1980. Wow, that Starblazers show is like no other cartoon I've ever seen. Too bad there's nothing else like it anywhere.
Oh MAN that takes me back...
It's the winter of 1980, and the family's in the middle of moving from Colorado to California, so there we are at a friend's place in L.A., and there I am, ten years old, with nothing to do but watch unfamiliar TV.
Keep in mind that up to this point the only anime I'd ever seen was Battle of the Planets, and after everything Sandy Frank did to it I don't think that counts as anime anymore. Certainly I hadn't even realized it was an import. Probably the best thing I'd seen on the tube up to that date was the '70s Tarzan cartoon--anyone remember, the one that was almost faithful to the books?
So there I am, flipping through the channels, when It comes on.
The second- or third-from-last episode of Star Blazers Season Two. Possibly the most emotionally wrenching moment in the whole run of the show.
The Comet Empire has blown up the Moon just to make a point. Earth's government has unconditionally surrendered. The -Argo- is the only ship still fighting, and Wildstar has just rammed it into the Gamilon flagship--and despite his injuries has pulled a gun and staggered onto the enemy bridge looking for Desslok.
That classic confrontation--Derek, Desslok, Nova--
--it blew my ten-year-old mind.
A losing battle, a noble villain, true love... it was like nothing I'd ever imagined a cartoon could be. It SEARED itself into my brain...
And I couldn't find it in the TV Guide! I didn't even know what its NAME was, and when we finally got to our new home it WASN'T ON THE AIR! AAAARGH!
It would be two long years before a local station picked up Star Blazers, and when I saw it again I damn near cried in sheer joy... from that point on, I was hooked. Otaku for life, practically BEFORE anyone knew the meaning of the word.
Anyone else got a how-I-found-anime tale...?
--Sam Ashley
"A cry for help, a desperate plight
Makes our Star Force reunite
As we rush to meet our fate
The Comet Empire awaits...!"

[Bob Schroeck]

Ten years old, eh? More generation gap time... in 79-80 I was in my senior year of high school. I had gotten a little B&W TV for 5 bucks at a church bazaar, and was watching stuff in the morning (circa 6 AM) while I got ready to go to school.
And I came across the first episode of Starblazers.
(Yes, I lucked out horribly.)
And I was like, whoa. No resolution in half an hour? What's this "Hurry, you only have 365 days left!" stuff? You mean it's a continuing story? Wow.
You have to understand (for those of you who don't) -- in 1979, the only continuing stories on TV were soap operas. The daytime ones. No primetime series with story arcs, no nighttime soaps. The idea of an epic science fiction cartoon threw me for a loop bigtime. It hooked me, and I watched every episode of the first two seasons, which is all they had, I guess, and lasted almost the entire school year. (Or so it seems to me now; it can't have been that long, can it? Five episodes a week, two seasons should have been only, what, about ten or eleven weeks, right?)
Now mind you, I haven't seen it since. I'm sure that after twenty-four years and a decade of my exposure to other anime, it'll seem pale and faded and even stupid, but I've still been seriously considering buying the DVDs. If only so I can show Peggy where the Dessler family in EPU's Symphony of the Sword comes from.
Maybe I can talk her into it after we get the new Utena DVD.

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

[cpt kangarooski]

Yeah, StarBlazers was good. However, being somewhat younger, my first anime was Tranzor Z (i.e. the dubbed version of Mazinger Z). And speaking of which, Mazinkaiser looks really good from the small amount of it I've seen so far.
Hm -- I know that an Eva step is slated, but a world consisting of an amalgamation of big robot series could work. The Mazinger series could easily, easily, mesh with Giant Robo, I'm sure. And maybe Gekiganger 3, Big O, and Getta Robo. Other suggestions?
Anway, Robotech really impressed me some years later when it was finally picked up in my town. Basically because it was the first cartoon I had ever seen that was ballsy enough to kill a significant character. (I won't say who here for the benefit of those poor souls who haven't seen it) That and the three long story arcs, though I'd already gotten fairly used to that idea thanks to The Mysterious Cities of Gold, which was also quite good.

[Logan Darklighter]

Like Bob, I caught the very first episode and was hooked.
Labor Day 1979. I had already been watching Battle of the Planets. And they actually advertised the previous week that this new show Star Blazers would be taking over the time slot. I was so disappointed at first, then I saw the commercials for the new show, and "Wow... That looks REALLY neat!"
So, forewarned, I actually caught the first episode.
The story does not start with the Argo. It instead starts with Captain Avatar as captain of one of the last Earth Battleships commanding our last spacefleet. They are trying to attack the forward base the Gamilons have at Pluto. The base where they are raining nuclear planet bombs on Earth.
The Earth has no seas. Almost no atmosphere. Poisonous radioactivity seeping into the ground. Poisoning the last underground strongholds (They didn't use the word back then, but the underground cities are definitely Geo-Fronts). In little more than a year, all remaining life on Earth will be extinct, even in the underground cities. In a flashback, as Avatar looks back from his vantage point aboard his battleship leaving for Pluto, the Earth looks more like Mars than the blue-green globe we are familiar with.
Flash forward to the battle. The Gamilons call for our surrender. Captain Avatar tells his comm officer to send them one word, "IDIOTS!" The man has cajones!
Earth's forces are getting their asses kicked. Our beam weapons don't have the range on the Gamilons. And while our missiles can kill them, we don't have nearly enough. One ship after another is destroyed. Finally only two are left, Captain Avatar's Battleship and a destroyer called the Paladin. The Paladin pulls a delaying action in order to let the larger ship escape. The Paladin fights fiercely and to the last, but the outcome is never in doubt, she goes down with all hands.
Captain Avatar's ship limps for home to the blasted Earth.
That's how this series STARTS!! That's the first TEN MINUTES!!!
As the first episode unfolds, we learn that two cadets, Derek Wildstar and Mark Venture, are stationed on one of our last outposts on Mars and have found the wreck of a starship that just crashed. It's not one of ours, but it's not one of the Gamilons either. There is an escape pod and a dead girl carrying a message capsule.
The two cadets retrieve the capsule and are ferryed back to Earth by Captain Avatar. Along the way, Derek finds out that his brother, the Captain of the Destroyer Paladin, has been lost.
The girl was the sister of Queen Starsha, who has sent the plans for a faster-than-light drive called the Wave Motion engine. She also offers the Earth a device called the Cosmo DNA, a device that can remove the radioactivity from the entire planet and restore it. She cannot send that to them herself. But with the FTL Wave Motion Engine, Earth is more than welcome to come and get it. But her home of Iscandar lies in the Great Magellanic Cloud, over 148,000 light years away. The Earth Defense Forces set an audacious plan into motion...
A couple of weeks later, Derek and Mark are lounging around the hanger of the local military base when an alert comes in. There is a Gamilon recon ship in the vicinity. Derek, incensed, convinces Mark to come along with him and they take a fighter up to confront it. But they have engine problems and crash in what was once the Japan seabed. They hop out and look around as they wait to be rescued. They wonder, why was that Gamilon plane all the way out here? What's here to look at?
Walking up the rise of low hill, they are startled to come upon the remains of the ancient Battleship Yamato, lying exposed... in the dying rays of sunset...
You talk about searing an image into one's brain. That series will stay with me forever. I just typed all of that from hard-coded memory. No looking up of sources.
-Logan
----------
Legolas - Obviously an Elvish word meaning "Gatling Gun".
----------

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, yeah.

That's it, exactly.
The moment when everything you think defines TV is just thrown out the door by a good story that just doesn't think that way.
God, I hope it's still good after a quarter century...

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

[Logan Darklighter]

Uhm... I hate to say this, Bob, but in 2 more years, it'll BE a quarter century... Gah...
Pass me the geritol would ya?
-Logan
----------
Legolas - Obviously an Elvish word meaning "Gatling Gun".
----------

[Bob Schroeck]

Actually, Logan, that's what I meant. I was just rounding up to the next closest "Oh my god, that long?" years...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Murmur the Fallen]

I actually refuse to watch "Star Blazers," though I have seen a few of the episodes.
The reason is, is that though I am a Leiji Matsumoto fan (you kind of have to be to enjoy Ring of the Neibelung [fweird is the only word that covers it]), I won't watch the dub version. I have studiously avoided all the subtitled Space Battleship Yamato movies out there until I've seen the original series, subtitled as the great big beard in the sky meant it.
But the subject tag refers to the fact that beyond the characters, continuity does not carry over much across the different works set in the Matsumoto-multiverse. Fer instance, I don't know HOW many different histories Harlock has (there's the original t.v. series, the manga, Arcadia of my Youth, the second manga, the OAV . . .), but they all reference the characters and whatnot and there are common threads throughout. La Metal, the Cosmo Dragoon, etc.
So; big megaseries, don't worry about continuity, but give Macross a try. It's good AND good for you.
-Murmur the Fallen
"I'd rather go to Iscandar than fight and be killed by an Oni!"
-Moroboshi Ataru

[drakensis]

Uh-huh. I guess I'd better check with my supplier to see if he's turned up a copy of Starblazers yet. It's been five months since I ordered it and it's listed as available on his website.
update: no, he doesn't have a copy but one of my other supplier expects to receive a delivery this month.
D for Drakensis

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

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, Peggy and I just finished watching Offsides' boxed set of Macross a few days ago. Several thoughts:
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.
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.
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.
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.
If Minmei is a bimbo, so is Hikaru. I mean, his superior officer comes to his house and cleans it for him, and he has no clue how she feels about him? I felt like grabbing him by his collar and pimpslapping him for an hour or two. Yeah, I can understand his focus on Minmay, but there's dense and then there's dense. Hikaru was competing with neutronium there for a while.
I was amused by the Zentradi named "Utena". I envisioned a Sword of Dios the size of a flagpole for a while there...
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.
Anyway, despite what this might sound like, I did in fact enjoy it. Now I'm curious about the various sequels...
Later, it's time for work.

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

[offsides]

Glad you enjoyed it. Remember, the animation is 20 years old, so that's apart of the reason it's kinda crappy...
In Hikaru's defense, he's maybe a year or two older than Minmay - he's still in the confused teenager state as well, made worse for the fact that he's not only startstruck with Minmay, but she likes him too...
As for the sequals, I have an old "LD Demo" VHS copy of the Macross Movie (meta-continuity; officially it's a movie inside the Macross TV Series universe), Macross II on VHS (meta-meta-continuity, IIRC the official position is that it's a fictional story within the Macross _Movie_ continuity...), and I have the Macross 7 Fansubs I got from Kodocha Anime before they closed. If you want, I can dig them out for you at some point...
Offsides
Drunkard's Walk Forum Moderator and Prereader At Large

[Bob Schroeck]

---

Glad you enjoyed it. Remember, the animation is 20 years old, so that's apart of the reason it's kinda crappy...

---

Hey, the age is no excuse. Starblazers is that old, and it doesn't look that bad. Speed Racer is even older, and other than its odd staticness comes across better...

---

In Hikaru's defense, he's maybe a year or two older than Minmay

---

Yeah, I spotted that on one of the box inserts. That really stretched believability for me. I can believe Minmay making it big in the very limited talent pool of the Macross population. But I have trouble with the idea of an experienced stunt pilot who is 16 years old... not a lot, I realize it's possible, but the anime obsession with hypercompetent teenagers does get on my nerves at times.
About sequels, one word: Yes.


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