The Official Macross Delta Anime Thread Mk I

[False Prophet]

So, Kotaku made an article about the concept arts from the Robotech movie that they keep trying to make but never will: https://kotaku.com/robotech-macross-mov ... 1850546078

Frankly speaking, even it is an entirely different franchise, I don't trust Hollywood to ever get mecha right. It is hard to say, but I always feel like mecha has this instinctive connection to the human spirit. With how sterile blockbusters can be nowadays, it just doesn't seem like it will work.

[Seto Kaiba]

So, Kotaku made an article about the concept arts from the Robotech movie that they keep trying to make but never will: https://kotaku.com/robotech-macross-mov ... 1850546078

Yeah, I'm like 80-90% convinced that's fake and the guy's just lying. Harmony Gold and its licensees know full bloody well they can't use Macross as a basis for anything in the movie.

That it's ALL Macross-based when HG has a clear prohibition on it says to me that it's probably BS. It also looks like something Stable Diffusion or another art AI spit out.

Frankly speaking, even it is an entirely different franchise, I don't trust Hollywood to ever get mecha right. It is hard to say, but I always feel like mecha has this instinctive connection to the human spirit. With how sterile blockbusters can be nowadays, it just doesn't seem like it will work.

Yeah, not being able to do mecha justice was part of the reason the Macross live action movie never made it into production.

[False Prophet]

So, it sounds like because of Harmony Gold (again), Shooting Insight won't have any character, stage or the VF-1 in the English release. And I though HG and Satelight have struck some deal? I just wish that Bushiroad will release the game with all of the contents in SEA region, where it is normal to have an English next to Japanese language.

[Ryujin]

It's hilarious how the English version of the Shooting Insight ad has this conspicuously empty space in the center.

[Chris]

So, it sounds like because of Harmony Gold (again), Shooting Insight won't have any character, stage or the VF-1 in the English release. And I though HG and Satelight have struck some deal? I just wish that Bushiroad will release the game with all of the contents in SEA region, where it is normal to have an English next to Japanese language.

What I'm unclear on is if all SDF Macross content is being removed from the English release, or if it's there but they're just ignoring it in all promotional material.

[Seto Kaiba]

So, it sounds like because of Harmony Gold (again), Shooting Insight won't have any character, stage or the VF-1 in the English release. And I though HG and Satelight have struck some deal? I just wish that Bushiroad will release the game with all of the contents in SEA region, where it is normal to have an English next to Japanese language.

Yeah, it seems that way.

It was announced a while back that apparently part of the distribution agreement is that Big West is going to forego using the character designs from the original series going forward for titles destined for international release... apparently this is the first title subject to "going forward".

[yazi88]

The question is if this is SDF Macross characters is only affecting the American release or even the Asian English release? Cause I don't think Harmony Gold can interfere with THAT version as it has nothing to do with the American release... So far its only the english promotion which goes for Western audiences but this is also the ire of Harmony Gold's BS at work like usual....

[Seto Kaiba]

The question is if this is SDF Macross characters is only affecting the American release or even the Asian English release? Cause I don't think Harmony Gold can interfere with THAT version as it has nothing to do with the American release... So far its only the english promotion which goes for Western audiences but this is also the ire of Harmony Gold's BS at work like usual....

Considering HG's license is a "rest of world" type that covers everywhere outside Japan... I'd assume it will probably cover any release outside of the Japanese domestic market. The issue here appears to be Harmony Gold holds the merchandising rights to Macross: Do You Remember Love? after adding them to their license agreement with Tatsunoko back in '01 in order to close a loophole in their attempts to block US import toy sellers from doing an end-run around their embargo by importing DYRL?-branded VF-1 toys that would otherwise have been outside the terms of their exclusive license to the merchandising rights for the first Macross series.

Mind you, region locks on games are increasingly rare these days... and I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the Japanese edition of the game happens to conveniently have English subtitles the same way that Japanese domestic market versions of the recent shows and movies have.

[False Prophet]

Either the South East Asian or the Japanese release will have the English subtitles. That is my guess. If it is Japanese, then I guess will just have to create a Japanese Nintendo account and buy Japanese eShop gift card. But what a bummer. Having a game or anything released in the US would help to make more people aware of Macross.

I am surprised that HG hasn't gone out the way of the dodos by now. Just how much monetary worth is left in the Robotech brand?

[Seto Kaiba]

I am surprised that HG hasn't gone out the way of the dodos by now. Just how much monetary worth is left in the Robotech brand?

Very little, by all accounts...

The main reason that Harmony Gold USA has not "going out the way of the dodos" is that their Robotech franchise is more of a company hobby than anything. Their main area of business is actually rental property management. They own and maintain a number of apartment buildings in the Los Angeles area. Their involvement in film distribution could be called a side hustle... and their founder was accused of using it to launder money in a large international tax fraud scheme.

They've hung onto the franchise because it provides a modest trickle of residuals which require little to no actual effort on their part because all the production costs were amortized decades ago or are carried by whatever bargain basement licensee they've found lately. The reason they're so fixated on maintaining the exclusivity of designs from the original Macross series is partly because that's the only part of Robotech that actually sells, but mainly because they need to continue to commercially exploit that themselves in an exclusive fashion in order to renew the trademarks that force Big West to negotiate with them in the first place.

[Seto Kaiba]

To clarify the above, the reason Harmony Gold is so keen on renewing those trademarks is because they'll be receiving royalties for the use of the title and various trademarked symbols and terms for products sold in the US.

[False Prophet]

To clarify the above, the reason Harmony Gold is so keen on renewing those trademarks is because they'll be receiving royalties for the use of the title and various trademarked symbols and terms for products sold in the US.

That is what I'm wondering. In the year of our Lord 2023, is there any new material for Robotech, any streaming service having it on their platform, or any new toy? Who are still paying royalty to HG?

[Seto Kaiba]

To clarify the above, the reason Harmony Gold is so keen on renewing those trademarks is because they'll be receiving royalties for the use of the title and various trademarked symbols and terms for products sold in the US.

That is what I'm wondering. In the year of our Lord 2023, is there any new material for Robotech, any streaming service having it on their platform, or any new toy? Who are still paying royalty to HG?

Funimation Crunchyroll has the streaming rights currently, after acquiring them sometime back in 2018 when Harmony Gold effectively delegated control of the entire franchise to them.

Robotech still moves small quantities of merchandise thanks to a few thousand very devoted, or very clueless, fans. The promise of a true HD re-release of the series on home video aside, the franchise only really has joke quality merchandising left. They've got their shitty vanity print apparel through one of those companies like CafePress, a dreadful new comic that is just a retread of one from 2001 being published by Titan comics, and a very poor quality RPG from an indie game publisher that took it on as a passion project but has no intention of actually following the official setting. They've also got some terrible low quality toys that were likewise a passion project from "indie" (amateur) makers and the occasional slightly less poor quality overpriced limited edition collectible from this former Macross toy bootlegger in Hong Kong.

It's not much, but it's more than zero, and that's all they need to keep those trademarks.

[False Prophet]

...former Macross toy bootlegger in Hong Kong.

That is interesting? I remember being shown a terrible English sub episode of Macross from Hong Kong, but have no idea that they made bootleg Macross toys too. If my memory is right, then in the mid-1980s Bandai and some other Japanese model manufacturers began opening up factories in China, and that was when you start to see more Chinese bootleg toys of Japanese properties. The Korean and Taiwanese Transformers bootlegs at the time seemed to be a mixed bag,

[Mafty]

So what exactly is the quality on the old Southern Cross toys? They actually did and make and sell Hover Tank and Auroran Toys (largely because they didn't make any toys to sell internationally). The toys resemble more large Transformer sets than Plamodels. I have no idea how well they sold, who exactly made them or if they were well made either.

[Seto Kaiba]

That is interesting? I remember being shown a terrible English sub episode of Macross from Hong Kong, but have no idea that they made bootleg Macross toys too. If my memory is right, then in the mid-1980s Bandai and some other Japanese model manufacturers began opening up factories in China, and that was when you start to see more Chinese bootleg toys of Japanese properties. The Korean and Taiwanese Transformers bootlegs at the time seemed to be a mixed bag,

We've been seeing bootleg properties before then... thanks to the use of Korean studios to do tweening and production support.

That's one of the problems with the allure of dirt cheap, borderline sweatshop, labor. It tends to be in places where intellectual property laws and the enforcement thereof also tend to be pretty weak. It really says a lot about the current state of affairs that Robotech's best licensee right now is a (now-legitimized) bootlegging operation in Hong Kong. Oddly, now that they have an agreement, HG and Big West are jointly cracking down on some bootleggers like CalibreWings, who had been unlawfully using material from Macross Zero and Macross VF-X.

So what exactly is the quality on the old Southern Cross toys? They actually did and make and sell Hover Tank and Auroran Toys (largely because they didn't make any toys to sell internationally). The toys resemble more large Transformer sets than Plamodels. I have no idea how well they sold, who exactly made them or if they were well made either.

...?

There wasn't a toy line for Southern Cross. The series was so late to freeze its designs that the vast majority of its planned merchandise was still on the drawing board or being prototyped when the network pulled the plug. All that got released were a few bits of apparel like rain boots and plastic models from Arii and Imai. They pulled the plug on most of the planned model kits too, but they released nine 1/12 scale arming doublet kits, a 1/48 scale Bioroid, and a 1/20 scale flash clapper (hoverbike). The only other noteworthy merchandise they got was a 1/12 scale garage kit of Jeanne. It was Robotech's partnership with Matchbox's EXO-SQUAD toy line that ultimately yielded the first actual Southern Cross toys in 1985, but the toy line didn't have great quality and didn't sell well either due to the show's mediocre broadcast viewership.

No Robotech toy licensee after Matchbox was willing to touch Southern Cross. Toynami flatly rejected the idea of doing toys of Southern Cross mecha on the grounds that the projected sales were too low to even merit consideration, and even the comparatively fly-by-night Palladium Books opted to set up their tabletop game's scale so that they wouldn't be doing the Masters Saga. It wasn't until 2018 that someone actually tried making proper Southern Cross toys and, true to form, it was a Transformers toy bootlegger in Hong Kong... and not one Harmony Gold had given a license to. They announced a crowdfunded Spartas toy, then had to back out because they failed to get a license (it was their attempt to go legit) and because financial improprieties in the management of the group led them to close up shop permanently due to running out of money and failing to fulfill backer pledges. An actual licensee later subsequently tried to develop a transforming Spartas toy but the project was a flop and the badly made prototype is currently being flogged on eBay as the indie company appears to be bailing on Robotech altogether.

[pirx]

I was wondering about Macross Plus movie edition - i mean, it's editing is ... well... it does not speak to me. Yes it has extended ending which is good but i prefer OVA version. Although Kawamori if i recall considers movie edition to be a definitive release. What does community think? Which version is preferable?

[Seto Kaiba]

I was wondering about Macross Plus movie edition - i mean, it's editing is ... well... it does not speak to me. Yes it has extended ending which is good but i prefer OVA version. Although Kawamori if i recall considers movie edition to be a definitive release. What does community think? Which version is preferable?

Considering Kawamori's personal/official stance on continuity and canon in Macross is that the whole thing runs on Broad Strokes Continuity and that all official versions of a given story are equally valid, it seems unlikely that he would consider any one version of any story to be "definitive".

If anything, the one the people working on the franchise seem to like best is probably Macross Plus: Game Edition for the Playstation... albeit for the game's original boss "Neo Glaug", which has put in four separate appearances as an antagonist mecha over the years across four decades of in-universe time.

Personally, I think events flow a bit better in the OVA version. Macross Chronicle also generally preferences the OVA version over the movie in coverage.

[False Prophet]

I can't remember for the life of me if I've already asked if the Neo Glaug, Variable Glaug and all the weird video game-only Zentrandi machine really exist? Or that whether the Queadluun-Rhea could triumph over all of them.

Also, were there any new class of Meltrandi/Zentrandi-centric class of war ships being devloped after they integrated with humanity, or did the NUNS just run one program at the time? Were the Zentrandi ship we saw in Frontier a newly-made one, or something from the first space war? It would be nice to see some Gnerl, the Meltrandi gunboat or those Neo Nupetiet from 7 still flying around by the time of Delta.

Do we have any idea when exactly did Captain Global die?

[Seto Kaiba]

I can't remember for the life of me if I've already asked if the Neo Glaug, Variable Glaug and all the weird video game-only Zentrandi machine really exist?

All of them? Probably not. We can only say with certainty that a few of them have been confirmed to be in the official setting. The Variable Glaug and Neo Glaug are very well established to be official setting designs. As are some of the mobile weapons from VF-X2.

Or that whether the Queadluun-Rhea could triumph over all of them.

Probably not all of them, considering the Neo Glaug was facing competition to the X-9 Ghost when it first appeared and the new model seen in 2058 is a manned version with comparable performance.

Also, were there any new class of Meltrandi/Zentrandi-centric class of war ships being devloped after they integrated with humanity, or did the NUNS just run one program at the time?

Not that we've seen, no. There was the stealth retrofit of the fleet command battleship in Macross 7, but that's not a new design.

Were the Zentrandi ship we saw in Frontier a newly-made one, or something from the first space war?

No idea. They're probably would not be much to distinguish a newly manufactured one from one that was captured. The designs haven't really changed much in half a million years.

Do we have any idea when exactly did Captain Global die?

Nope.

He was 46 in 2009, so he was born somewhere around 1963. If he's still alive by the time of Macross Delta and its second movie then he would be over 100 years old. Not exactly outside the realm of possibility, but longer than anyone else we've seen in the setting by a good measure.