Robotech news ... FROM THE FUTURE!

This is too good. Thank you, MedMapGuy. Thank you very much.

Toynami @ SDCC: Wash, Rinse, Repeat ...

Figures.com's coverage of the ROBOTECH corner of the Toynami booth at San Diego shows us nothing new, nothing all that exciting. But if, like me, you just want to gawk at new pictures of Scott Bernard's Cyclone and the Beta Fighter, or want to do a point-by-point comparison of the Masterpiece Alpha and its reengineered Mospeada counterpart, click over and take a look. I will have to pick up that Cyclone. Just hope it's sturdier than all my other high-end Toynami figures ...

UPDATE: Another gallery can be found at ActionFigs.com.

ALSO: In related news, a translation of this post at Yacolog would tell you that CM's Corporation is planning their own Mospeada Ride Armor for December in Japan -- one month after Toynami's Masterpiece Cyclone comes out in the States -- while their Brave Gokin Legioss & Tread set is delayed to next spring. So I guess Toynami/Aoshima's Beta will be the first out the gate.

And your Shadow Chronicles sequel is called ...

... Robotech: Shadow Rising.

That's basically all the news in this Anime News Network story on the news out of San Diego. But there ya go.

UPDATE: Anime News Network provides a complete panel report, which includes a few interesting tidbits, including a remark about an aborted attempt to bring over Macross Zero.

The Roboblog Chronicles: Episode 12

Thanks for the questions, Admiral DMC McKeever, Skull 23, and Ben Carrozza! If you want a little more in-depth answer on anything, ask away in the comments thread or e-mail me and I'll be happy to dig in!



Do YOU have a question? Drop in the thread or e-mail me now, and I'll try and answer it on Wednesday night's show!

Video tonight, but for now ...

Two links:

• Anime News Network has coverage of the Harmony Gold ROBOTECH panel at the past weekend's Otakon out in Baltimore. Click here to read what Steve said. (The big one: sequel news of some sort at San Diego.)


• People are still watching The Shadow Chronicles and writing about it on the Interwobble. This guy seems to think it was ehh, okay. He also thought Louie was a new character, though that doesn't surprise me in the least.

Oh, the things they say about us: The next episode of Space Station Liberty is ...

The next episode of Chris "Robotech Master" Meadows's Space Station Liberty Talkcast has been penciled in -- Friday, July 27 at 7:30 p.m. EDT. Tommy Yune and Kevin McKeever will be on live from San Diego -- I guess, to repeat all the news they fed the live audience at their Comic-Con International panel earlier in the day (the Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles panel is from 10:30 - 11:30 a.m. on Friday) for those of us who spent all our trip money on Anime Expo can't be there. I hope if there is any real news, it's something more substantial than, "We found more hilarious animation mistakes to package with the Special Edition!"

A few notes ...

• Yes, I have just turned off unregistered commenting. Sorry to all the folks who WERE consistently attaching a screen name without registering with Blogger, but, y'know ... conversations without names are SO hard to follow.


• Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, I've decided that the next two Roboblog Chronicles videos are going to be Q&A shows. You post Q's in the comments thread (or send 'em to me via e-mail), I answer them on the show. No, I'm not just being lazy -- I've got a few things in mind for the next week or so, both blog and non-blog related, so I figure, this should be easier than conjuring up some material or an angle on something ... and beyond that, hey, should be fun, right? Ask away!

Huzzah with the linkage.

• Here's an interview with Billy Palmer from Airborne Entertainment, the folks who crafted the Robotech: The New Generation cell phone game that Tommy Yune hypes at every available opportunity. He only very briefly talks about the game, but it's worth a glance.


• From the "where are they now?" files, if you scroll down here you'll find an interview with one Adam Cogan, who was the game designer on Robotech: Battlecry and apparently is now co-writing a psuedo-historical comic series called The Black Coat. Again, very brief ROBOTECH content, but kind of interesting.


• These folks made a 2 3/4 meter tall SDF-1 Macross out of wood. That's what I call crazy dedication.


• Anime News Network reports that the website for the Megazone 23 adventure game is now open. Boy, if the music playing on the website is anything to go by, this is at least going to sound like Megazone 23 ... Apparently this is setting up an alternate timeline spinning off from Megazone 23 Part 1 -- twenty years pass, and Yui gives her son Hiroto the key to the "Blue Garland" of the game's title after she is attacked (killed in a tearful goodbye, it looks like). B.D.'s still around as the bad guy. Wonder what happened to Shogo -- they do show pictures around the site of the original red Garland with Eve lounging on it, so maybe that's some kind of major point? Interesting at any rate, but I still think it's not gonna be much fun to play for a non-Japanese-speaking or reading person like me.


• Treiz writes in to let us know that this month's Anime Insider magazine, in their monthly "versus" column, pits Lynn Minmei against Mobile Suit Gundam SEED's Lacus Clyne. Considering that Lacus is basically, "Relena from Gundam Wing + Minmei + pink hair," that seems an obvious match-up ...

The Roboblog Chronicles: Episode 11.5

Offered without comment ... I read and respond to episode 11's comments thread while very, very tired.

And the funny thing is I don't even really like Robotech.com all that much ...

Man, that Khyron_Prime's, like, a master of Photoshop-fu. Wow.

Thanks to pal Evan for pointing me in the direction of this masterpiece. (See it at its home here.)

Oh, and if you'd like a little substance with your snark, I just finished revising and reposting my summaries and analysis of the first two issues of the first WildStorm ROBOTECH mini-series to the current comics site. Next down in the pile is the old Comico Dana's Story special, which despite being a mere adaptation of a recap episode has more substance and energy than both of those issues combined. (Even if a lot of that is *ahem* borrowed wholesale from the McKinney novels.)

This week I bothered to show up to the party.

At pal Evan "The Cassman" Cass's urging, I showed up for last night's edition of RDF Underground, concerning what all assembled would do with Tommy Yune's job running ROBOTECH and an unlimited budget. Lots of ideas bandied about both realistic and decidedly unrealistic. Listen to it here.

The Roboblog Chronicles: Episode 11

Sorry I'm so late with this. I'm going through another period of feeling horribly drained right now, so every time I sat down to shoot this for the past few days, I just wanted to throw the book down and go to bed. But after two Mountain Dews and a cup of strong coffee, I got it done for YOU, the Roboblog reader/viewer.

Destroy All Podcasts on the OTHER, other part of Robotech ...

As The Masters pointed out last week, the irreverent 70's/80's anime-focused podcast Destroy All Podcasts DX's July 5th show was all about Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. (Click here to give it a whirl.) So, of course, what are they covering in their latest? Why, Genesis Climber Mospeada, naturally. Listen here.

Question for everyone ...

Planning on flipping through The Art of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles for the Roboblog Chronicles video webcast tonight (7/11/07), so before then, I'd like to know -- what do YOU want to know about the book? What do you want to see? I've only got ten minutes, and I was thumbing through the book and boy, I have no clue how to distill all of that into ten little minutes. Leave your thoughts in the comments thread, please.

Thanks.

How disappointing.

Check it out -- it's the Megazone 23 video game, Blue Garland, being developed for the PS3 for the Japanese market. Looks like it's some sort of lousy visual novel "adventure game" sort of thing with all-new characters and mecha, set in a more contemporary phony Tokyo that nobody knows is actually aboard a spaceship. Ah, silly me, thinking a Japanese developer would make a Megazone game that would actually tap the potential of the license ...

More pics here, official website here.

The Roboblog Chronicles: Episode 10

There are four ROBOTECH-related events and facts from Anime Expo 2007 that I want to talk about. Here they are.


For the record, The Art of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles is currently available (or so they claim) at BarnesAndNoble.com and Books-A-Million, but still not at Amazon. That's kind of weird, isn't it?

In the interest of fairness and balance ... here's Khyron_Prime's pie report. Also, if you haven't seen it yet, while we're at it, here's Anime News Network's pie report as well.

Oh, and it looks to me like Tom Bateman ceased working for Harmony Gold sometime between May 7, 2007 and May 22, 2007. (Links to archived Robotech.com "About Us" pages via Archive.org's "Wayback Machine." Wow, he kept that under his hat for a while.)

Apparently this is, like, REAL news.

Anime News Network has an article up about Tommy Yune getting a pie in the face from Khyron_Prime at Anime Expo. It includes a YouTube video and photo of the incident.

The article also confirms, in unrelated ROBOTECH news, that Tom Bateman is no longer with Harmony Gold, nor is Alan Letz.

Geez, now what am I going to talk about on Roboblog Chronicles tonight?

Roboblog Chronicles delay. | Toynami @ AX coverage

I just remembered that the AC adapter and Firewire cord for my camera are in my suitcase, which U.S. Airways failed to send along to United for my final connecting flight back to Kansas City. I could record the intro and commentary -- the camera itself is in my laptop bag -- but I still wouldn't be able to get it into the computer. The suitcase is supposed to be coming along via FedEx, but are they really going to drop my suitcase off on my porch on the Fourth of July? It would certainly be a shock. We'll see.

*sigh*

(Even worse -- my cell phone charger was in there. No juice 'til the bag turns up. Ugh.)

Anyway ...

---

Reader and Figures.com contributor Scott Rubin points me to his coverage of the Toynami booth at Anime Expo. I got some footage of the Voltron and ROBOTECH displays myself, which you'll be able to see when/if my luggage arrives (or I track down another Firewire cord), but for more static and less potentially nausea-inducing images (trust me, I'm a terrible cameraman), clicky-click here. Some slightly interesting developments in there. (The big one I noticed

Journey's End

As of this writing, I'm sitting at the Long Beach airport; my plane takes off in about an hour and forty-five minutes, but my computer doesn't have that much juice. I wonder if there's an electrical outlet around here ... hmm.

Anyway, Expo, was ... ah, eventful. I'll give you a bit of that on the next Roboblog Chronicles either tomorrow or on the 4th (though if you dig around enough you can find out what I'm alluding to). I taped the whole panel, but I won't make you sit through all of it -- man, even if I *did* have a paid YouTube account, I wouldn't make you sit through all that! No, you want the GOOD parts, right? So the good parts you'll get.

I just hope my camera picked up everything that was said. For a guy who does so many panels a year, Tommy seems to have a hard time actually speaking into his mic.

Of course the "big" news was the Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles Special Edition 2-DVD set, with commentary by Tommy Yune, Scott Glasgow (composer), and Ford Riley (screenwriter), deleted scenes (huh, huh -- look, nekkid people!), and the complete Robotech 3000 promo animation. Oh, and the box is white where the old box was black. You know what I wonder (and completely failed to ask Tommy & Co.)? I wonder what the price point is on this if the bare bones disc has a list price of $30 (though as someone once told me, only suckers pay suggested retail).

Tommy also keeps trying to sell us the New Gen cell phone game. That must be why he didn't have anything to say on the Shadow Chronicles sequel -- they haven't even started on it because he's spending all his time shooting Invid on his cell phone. There we go.

Battery power's running low, so I gotta go. As always, more later.