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ROBOTECH


Werthead

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19 minutes ago, Myrddin said:

I started watching Robotech: Southern Cross with my son a few weeks ago. It's the first time I've seen this part of the saga for 25+ years. It really is a mess. I remember being able to go with the flow when I was 12, but now knowing the history behind how they cobbled three separate series together, I'm looking past the dub and trying to figure out the original story too. I think they're both bad. :) 

That said, I'm excited to see the series re-booted in live action. The novelizations did a great job of smoothing over the narrative mess of the shows. Hopefully the new movies will rely on those more than the show.

As for losing mecha designs, yeah that sucks. Gen 1 Veritechs were always my favorite, over the Ajax and Alphas. But as SpaceChampion said above, as long as they don't got he Bayformers route of reimagining, it should be fine. /crosses fingers

 

I never had cable as a child and none of my local stations ran Robotech the series.  I found the "Robotech Art" books and thought they were really cool.  I read the novels as they were published while I was in high school.  They were fun.  It would be interesting to see the live action movies done well.

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2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I never had cable as a child and none of my local stations ran Robotech the series.  I found the "Robotech Art" books and thought they were really cool.  I read the novels as they were published while I was in high school.  They were fun.  It would be interesting to see the live action movies done well.

In Charleston, it ran on the local non-network station at 7 in the morning. Not Fox. The other one... Before UPN or WB... Can't remember.

My morning routine was to start the VCR at 7, watch 10 minutes until I had to leave for the bus, let the VCR record 6 hours or so until it ran out of tape and rewound. When I got home, I'd watch what I missed and get the tape ready to record for the next day. We had all three generations on tape by the time I was done, only missing a few episodes due to technical difficulties.

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7 minutes ago, Myrddin said:

In Charleston, it ran on the local non-network station at 7 in the morning. Not Fox. The other one... Before UPN or WB... Can't remember.

My morning routine was to start the VCR at 7, watch 10 minutes until I had to leave for the bus, let the VCR record 6 hours or so until it ran out of tape and rewound. When I got home, I'd watch what I missed and get the tape ready to record for the next day. We had all three generations on tape by the time I was done, only missing a few episodes due to technical difficulties.

In Maryland it ran on WBFF channel 45 before it became a Fox affiliate (before FOX network existed). It was a UHF channel, you needed to add about 3 more feet of silver foil to the rabbit ears on the TV to get it unless you could watch it on the big TV hooked up to the roof antenna. Captain Chesapeake always hosted the afternoon line up of cartoons. 

Twice I tried recording the series on Betamax, I always waited until it came around again and started with the first episode of the Macross Saga. First time I got like five episodes in until I missed a day and gave up, the second time I got about ten episodes. During the years when it was off the air and before it became available on DVD and streaming (all that was available were VHS tapes you had to order through mail that cost about $20  - $40 each and had just three episodes on them) I often kicked myself for just not taping every episode as I could not caring if I missed one hear and there.

 

Quote

I started watching Robotech: Southern Cross with my son a few weeks ago. It's the first time I've seen this part of the saga for 25+ years. It really is a mess. I remember being able to go with the flow when I was 12, but now knowing the history behind how they cobbled three separate series together, I'm looking past the dub and trying to figure out the original story too. I think they're both bad. :) 

The Southern Cross chapters (in Robotech it was called "The Robotech Masters") were the worst. I remember as a kid I always seemed to miss the last few episodes of the Macross Saga but more than once caught the beginning of The Robotech Masters. So I knew Dana's back story but I never knew how the Macross part ended until I was in my teens and read the books. All my friends and i hated the Robotech Masters episodes. They bored us to tears. When it switched to "The New Generation" (Mospeada) which we also caught the first episode of we were all cheering because Robotech was good again. New Generation wasn't as good as Macross but it was a whole lot better than Masters. The veritechs were always the favorite mecha but we were fans of the cyclones and the Alphas weren't that bad.

Voltron did the same thing cobbling two separate anime series together to make one cartoon. It was supposed to be three like Robotech but the Lions episodes were loved so much and the Vehicle ones hated, World Events just said forget about adapting that third anime and then asked Japan if they could make more of the Lion episodes specifically for the U.S. market, and they did. As kids we had no idea what was going on with these cartoons and it just confused us why they had to keep changing the story from the characters and vehicles we loved to ones we hated.

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39 minutes ago, Myrddin said:

In Charleston, it ran on the local non-network station at 7 in the morning. Not Fox. The other one... Before UPN or WB... Can't remember.

My morning routine was to start the VCR at 7, watch 10 minutes until I had to leave for the bus, let the VCR record 6 hours or so until it ran out of tape and rewound. When I got home, I'd watch what I missed and get the tape ready to record for the next day. We had all three generations on tape by the time I was done, only missing a few episodes due to technical difficulties.

Not in Columbia.  We didn’t get Transformers or GI Joe beyond the “mini-series” they ran when they were first created.  We got Masters of the Universe and Thundercats.  

I’ve been mildly bitter about that for some time. :)

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23 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Not in Columbia.  We didn’t get Transformers or GI Joe beyond the “mini-series” they ran when they were first created.  We got Masters of the Universe and Thundercats.  

I’ve been mildly bitter about that for some time. :)

What kind of commie bastards did you have in South Carolina that didn’t run GI Joe in the 80’s?!!!!?

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Not in Columbia.  We didn’t get Transformers or GI Joe beyond the “mini-series” they ran when they were first created.  We got Masters of the Universe and Thundercats.  

I’ve been mildly bitter about that for some time. :)

You poor deprived child.

Not to rub it in, but I was over saturated. Situated in the suburbs of D.C. and Baltimore I could get twice as many stations in those pre-cable antenna-TV days. WTTG channel 5 and WDCA channel 20 in D.C. and WBFF channel 45 and WNUV channel 54 in Baltimore ALL ran afternoon cartoons on weekdays as well as in the mornings before school. In 1983-1986 it was only a matter of choosing what to watch out of Robotech, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, M.A.S.K., G.I. Joe, Voltron, Superfriends,Transformers, Challenge of the GoBots, Thundercats, Silverhawks, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and She-Ra: Princess of Power. With a splattering of Heathcliff, an animated Dennis The Menace series, Inspector GadgetFat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Flintstones, Jetsons, and packages of Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, and Woody Woodpecker shorts for more variety.

Ok, maybe I am rubbing it in a little :P 

ETA:

The golden line-up was:

  • 2:30 pm: Robotech
  • 3 pm: G.I. Joe
  • 3:30 pm: Masters of the Universe
  • 4 pm: Voltron
  • 4:30 pm: Transformers
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1 hour ago, Rhom said:

What kind of commie bastards did you have in South Carolina that didn’t run GI Joe in the 80’s?!!!!?

Just in Colombia. We beach folk were well cultured. :)

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54 minutes ago, drawkcabi said:

You poor deprived child.

Not to rub it in, but I was over saturated. Situated in the suburbs of D.C. and Baltimore I could get twice as many stations in those pre-cable antenna-TV days. WTTG channel 5 and WDCA channel 20 in D.C. and WBFF channel 45 and WNUV channel 54 in Baltimore ALL ran afternoon cartoons on weekdays as well as in the mornings before school. In 1983-1986 it was only a matter of choosing what to watch out of Robotech, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, M.A.S.K., G.I. Joe, Voltron, Superfriends,Transformers, Challenge of the GoBots, Thundercats, Silverhawks, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and She-Ra: Princess of Power. With a splattering of Heathcliff, an animated Dennis The Menace series, Inspector GadgetFat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Flintstones, Jetsons, and packages of Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, and Woody Woodpecker shorts for more variety.

Ok, maybe I am rubbing it in a little :P 

ETA:

The golden line-up was:

  • 2:30 pm: Robotech
  • 3 pm: G.I. Joe
  • 3:30 pm: Masters of the Universe
  • 4 pm: Voltron
  • 4:30 pm: Transformers

Oh, I forgot, we got "GoBots" instead of Transformers.  I was very bitter about that one too.

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Yeah, Southern Cross is insane. The original anime was set on a colony planet and was about a very different of conflict to the original show, much more metaphysical and weird (complete with humans, androids, clones and other stuff). So when they turned it into Robotech they had to pretend the alien planet was Earth, the three hills where the final battle was fought were turned into the SDF-1's graveyard etc. It really didn't work.

The novels I generally find are the best version of the story. Daley and Luceno were able to recast the entire story in a way that made more sense and promoted background characters to starring roles (like Lang and Zand, who weren't even named and were barely extras in the original series). Plus the novels actually got an ending (as dodgy as it was) and filled in the gaps between the generations reasonably well.

It's still an utterly bonkers story. I have no idea how they're going to make a live-action work without either making the story more realistic, which would be a mistake (a lot of Robotech's fun is generated by how flat-out balls insane it is), or spending ten times the budget of Avatar on the first movie by itself.

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