The NEXT one will be the 400th post on this blog ...

Clearing out some links from the backlog ...

• Treiz lets us know that Palladium has the finished cover art for the Shadow Chronicles RPG book up at their website (which I yoinked and put above). If you pop over there, you can also preorder the book.
  
  Oh, and Kevin Siembieda is also selling off original ROBOTECH artwork on eBay, including an oh-so-iconic Kevin Long piece from the original ROBOTECH RPG sourcebook. Check it out!



• Roger Harkavy points out Matt Alt's essay at Néojaponisme on the messages of Macross, "War in a Material World".
  
  That really got me thinking about yet another way to contrast the Macross TV series and the movie -- at least in ROBOTECH's dialogue, it's Minmei who really pushes the idea on her aunt and uncle that "this is still our good old hometown" that helps everyone keep their spirits up in the face of their "trapped in a battleship in deep space" circumstance -- but by the time we're introduced to Macross City in the movie, the place has a functioning McDonald's, for crying out loud. Macross City in the movie, in keeping with the "everything is bigger and shinier in the movie" theme, is a fully-functioning metropolis within the Macross and feels devoid of that plucky can-do spirit that epitomizes the Macross City of the TV series. Part of it could be the fact that we just don't get as much time in Macross City during the movie's running time, or spend any time dealing with the citizens on the ground or what-have-you ... but I dunno, living in movie Macross looks awfully luxurious compared to TV Macross, which always had this feeling of being stuck in the Space Frontier where you have to roll up your sleeves and fix those walls every other day with duct tape, spare sheet metal, and parts recycled from that Destroid that blew up across the street the other day.



• And Brian Diegnan provides a link over to ASM's coverage of this weekend's New York Toy Fair, specifically the Toynami display image gallery, where everything new that's shown off is boxes -- specifically, the Masterpiece Collection box for Maia Sterling's Skull One and the Japanese box for the long-awaited Toynami Cyclone.
  
  Soooooo, has anyone talked to George Sohn or one of his employees about when the hell these toys are coming out? Because this is getting totally ridiculous.
  
  Bonus Toy Update - 4:52 p.m.
  Have you seen the latest photos of the CM's Legioss-Tread combo set? It looks niftilicious.



• Comic book blogger Mike Sterling opened his Sunday post with the hideously jagged logo for Academy Comics' Sentinels Halloween Special. Noted just because wow, wasn't expecting to see that there.

On the line on DougBendo's show ...

So a few days ago the dude messages me via MySpace, "When are you gonna be on my show?" And I tell him, "Name the day and time, and I'll be there." And he did. So here I am.

BTW, my apologies for not posting all that often lately. The comics contest is over, I'm trying to pick a winner, and I think I'll have a Roboblog Chronicles video up tomorrow night about the results so far.

EDIT: It's 1:33 a.m. and I just got off the line. Very interesting discussion back and forth between Doug and myself about The Shadow Chronicles, anime edits through the ages, the Japanese people, name changes, and the absurdity of a purple Shadow Fighter. Four hours of free-wheeling chat -- I'm not gonna say you should listen to all of it, but if you've been feeling deprived of my insights as of late (he said with a laugh), give it a skim.