Pilot's Log

I've been trolling Suruga-Ya's website for about a month now, and contemplating stupf I want to buy from them.  The estimated damage so far is about $300 and I'm just getting started--and everything I'm "firm" on so far is at least thirty to forty years old.

Today, I came to the end of a very long and drawn out process in an attempt to acquire something that had some otaku significance but still hadn't made it to America.

Space Gundam V, the South Korean knockoff anime based around the Valkyrie fighter from Macross. Somebody made a torrent available a few months ago, and I got to download it in pieces over the course of the past month or so, and took final delivery overnight.

This program is worse than I imagined it could be. It's even worse than the Digiview content, which I would have found hard to believe if somebody told me so. The visual narrative is a mess, which probably means whoever made this was likely under pressure to get it done quickly and just threw it together. There is far too much cliché physical comedy, the kind you see more often in American and Western cartoons. (If the Filmation people who worked on the Archie cartoons of the Sixties and Seventies did a giant robot show, it would probably be a lot like this--but maybe better!)

The story is pretty much like Fight! Iczer-1 in that an evil alien being is terrorizing Earth with awful monsters, and a good alien being from the same race is a mission to stop him. When a young man heroically fights a great white shark to save his kid sister and friends and gets badly hurt doing so, the good alien does the Ultraman Bargain with him, "synchronizing" and possessing his body so the alien can live among Earthlings and do his work.

He/they go to the shore and retrieve the Valkyrie fighter there just in time to intercept a raid by...an enormous rat. There is a scene in which the good being tries to talk the bad being into giving up his stupid--I mean, nefarious enterprises, but of course, it fails.

And then a giant spider and a Breetai-sized demon show up, and the Valkyrie (and the silly mecha of the silly sidekick character who makes Hayao Kakizaki/Ben Dixon look like Isaac Newton) fight them. The Earthlings trick the demon into killing the spider, and then, after an embarrassing scene of Head Lasers to demonic groin, it is revealed that the demon is actually a bio-mech piloted by the villain, who, through the use of a droid, has kidnapped the kid sister of the possessed hero. It eventually takes an over-the-top Lucasesque Jedi Force fight showdown to resolve the issue, which makes you wonder "if the aliens had these powers to begin with, why did they need giant robots?"

I've probably made it sound more interesting than it is. When I first learned about this program, I'd thought about redubbing it into English as a Robotech tribute/parody, but I'd have to edit it a lot to do that.

FP

Since I had time to burn on Friday evening before the Hackerspaces meeting, I took a trip to Clinton to the comics shop there (Q.V. White Lightning Trail Stage Ⅱ) and found the Macross Guide Book. The owner-operator of the store didn't know what it was, so I was able to name my price and $10 was totally fair to him, in his opinion.

This doesn't complete my set. Don't you know there is no such thing as a "complete" set? ;)

FP

A long time ago, when I traded in my unused copy of Battletech: 2nd Edition box set for the then-current Battletech Compendium, I'd taken the unpunched counter sheets to the photocopier on the campus du jour where I went to school. Still have those degraded copies, so I scanned them in last night and started to re-color them using my graphics programs. I'll probably go through all the set before I'm through. My hope is to somehow come upon a color scheme in which I can paint my multitude of miniatures.

Of course, my first thought was to use the heraldric colors of my family coat-of-arms, but those are black and gold, and the result would be like the mascot for NFL On FOX. Not particularly appealing, that.

So I'll post these graphics as I achieve them and see what kind of reaction I get.

At the same Route 66 tourist trap store at which I recently bought cheap music CDs, they have very cheap costume motorcycle helmets--not legal for actual safety use but "convicing" in appearance. Two styles: skullcap and mini-Fritz (parody of the old German army helmet). I'm already thinking that the skullcap type could be the basis for sci-fi helmets such as the Macross/Robotech fighter pilot type. Or perhaps just repaint them in some "me-ish" colors? Hmm.

For the record, I think any attempt at a SHOGUN WARRIORS movie would be an exercize in intellectual properties Hell. Not only were there instances of "concept rape" in the translation to American (no human characters imported, for a big example) but the mecha designs came from at least three different sources that were, and still are, competitors!

Across town, the would-be creative team behind the proposed ROBOTECH movie are awaiting a greenlight from Warner Brothers. They have the backing of Harmony Gold (no duh) but are basing their story on Macross Saga which means they'll have to somehow placate Big West and Tatsunoko (the Japanese creators and rightsholders for the original content).

PS: The scorecard on the SHOGUNS (cribbed from Wikipedia)...
* Dragun, Poseidon, Raider, the Mazingers, Gaiking and Grandizer were all from the imagination of Go Nagai. And there is a Mazinger TV series that either is currently running or recently finished in Japan.

* Combatra, Voltes V and Daimos were from the (future) creators of Voltron at Toei Studios.

* Danguard Ace came from Leiji Matsumoto, who also brought us Captain Harlock and Star Blazers.

* Raydeen was created by Yoshiyuki Tomino, who went on from that to Mobile Suit Gundam.

* 17 was from a Japanese live-action show, and Leopardon was from the Japanese live-action version of Spider-Man.

( The Mechwarrior 5 Demo Trailer At The Center Of The Dispute )

Meanwhile:
( Fallout From The Big Comics Merger--Backward Compatible-Style! )

( The Super-Deformed Version of the Macross TV Series Titles )

This was made in the Nineties for the syndicated re-release of the show.