Of Robotech and Yes
Nov. 25th, 2003 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterWeekend was largely uneventful, mostly spent in playing computer games and recharging. Workdays have been about the same as they've ever been...not much new on that front.
Heard an interesting bit of news the other day...A.D. Visions is coming out with a remastered version of its Robotech DVD sets...taking the footage from the restored and remastered sets of the original anime on which it was based that they've done, adding in some stuff that was edited out of the original series before it aired on TV, and redoing the entire soundtrack in Dolby 5.1 sound. A lot of the fan response has been indignant complaint, particularly from those who already shelled out over $200 for the 7-volume, $30-to-$40-a-volume first release of the show on DVD. They accuse ADV of "double-dipping," releasing successive editions of the same show so as to make fans shell out more than once. I have to admit, if I'd purchased those DVD sets (as I had half a mind to when they came out), I'd be more than a little peeved myself.
It's a little hard to decide how I should really feel about Robotech at this stage of my life. It's kind of become the cool thing among people who consider themselves "real" (read, "elitist") anime fans to trash the show for "heartlessly mangling" three unrelated anime series together into one mishmash. And I can sort of see where they're coming from. It does seem a bit hypocritical, doesn't it, for one who complains when anime are poorly dubbed or subtitled these days to look with such reverance on the What's Up Tiger Lily of Japanese animation?
And yet, if you look beyond what was "done to" the show in terms of changing it from what it was originally...well, in the case of the latter two series that made up the show, what it was was originally not all that great. Super Dimension Calvalry Southern Cross was one of very few anime TV series to be so unpopular that production on the show was cancelled early, and Genesis Climber Mospeada was fairly unpopular as well. And the first third of Robotech, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, one of the most popular anime ever in Japan, was left relatively unchanged. In the changes made to tie the shows together, Carl Macek's talented team of writers—including, among others, Brian Daley (best known for his work on the Star Wars radio dramas and the Han Solo novel trilogy), James Luceno (who, with Daley, formed the writing duo of "Jack McKinney" that novelized Robotech), and one of the writers who helped with Babylon Five—forged a much stronger series out of the alloy of the three than any of them individually. The story takes on a certain sweep, a certain greatness...well, I suppose if you hate Robotech, I'm not going to convince you.
But the other thing is, Robotech is a great part of my childhood. Perhaps one of the greatest; there's certainly a reason that to this day my net moniker is Robotech_Master. Robotech was one of the first anime shows I ever saw...certainly the first that I was able to follow as a series from start to finish. It was certainly the longest in terms of plot...85 half-hour episodes. I'm not even sure whether, before I saw it, I was even aware that a show could go on for that long, have that much story to tell. I vaguely remember how I felt on first seeing it...I had seen some of Transformers and thought that was pretty cool...but they were these giant robots, and somehow distant, unreachable for being that. But here was the idea that a human being could pilot a "transformer" and use it to fight the enemy. I was hooked, and so were my brothers. Hooked enough to get up at 6 a.m. Saturday and tune in a station that didn't come in very well to sit there and watch an hour of it a week. All through school, it colored my thoughts...I pored over the Palladium Robotech RPG (which I later found to be massively inaccurate in matters of mecha) and the McKinney novels (which I later found to be massively inaccurate in matters of mecha control systems) and made my first attempts at fanfic with some frankly rather bad works based on them.
And when I came to the 'net, Robotech fandom was one of the first groups online I got involved with, and a more contentious group you'll never find anywhere. Except maybe in Star Trek fandom, or Transformers fandom, or...well, all right, I guess fandom everywhere is about the same. Oh well. That series is bound up into a large part of my life. Maybe it's about time I went ahead and started getting the installments.
It's kind of funny, in a way...one of the big reasons I didn't get the old Robotech set is that I'd heard it wouldn't be remastered, the way AnimEigo's Macross would be, so in comparison it would look pretty lousy.I'm not really sure why I let that convince me to give the DVDs a miss. Perhaps I was thinking of waiting and buying them used. Perhaps subconsciously I thought that they might change their minds and issue a remastered edition someday. Either way, well...I'm glad I waited, because I'd really be kicking myself now if I hadn't. Funny thing, though...I did end up picking up the last six episodes of Robotech: Macross on DVD in Kmart a few weeks ago at the bargain price of $6. Now I guess I'll have something to which to compare the remastered ones.
Speaking of DVDs, another DVD I've recently picked up is the DVD-Audio edition of the classic Yes album "Fragile". I did this partly because I could get a bargain price on eBay, and partly because I was curious at how good it would sound compared to the stereo version I've heard already. Suffice it to say, I was completely blown away by the surround-sound nature of the music. I can't say whether the quality of individual channels is necessarily any better than CD, but then I've often had trouble telling the difference between high-quality mp3 and CD. What I can say is that having the sound coming from five different directions at once makes a lot of difference—like the difference between mono and stereo, but more so. It's a lot of fun to hear it.
Not much else to report.
Heard an interesting bit of news the other day...A.D. Visions is coming out with a remastered version of its Robotech DVD sets...taking the footage from the restored and remastered sets of the original anime on which it was based that they've done, adding in some stuff that was edited out of the original series before it aired on TV, and redoing the entire soundtrack in Dolby 5.1 sound. A lot of the fan response has been indignant complaint, particularly from those who already shelled out over $200 for the 7-volume, $30-to-$40-a-volume first release of the show on DVD. They accuse ADV of "double-dipping," releasing successive editions of the same show so as to make fans shell out more than once. I have to admit, if I'd purchased those DVD sets (as I had half a mind to when they came out), I'd be more than a little peeved myself.
It's a little hard to decide how I should really feel about Robotech at this stage of my life. It's kind of become the cool thing among people who consider themselves "real" (read, "elitist") anime fans to trash the show for "heartlessly mangling" three unrelated anime series together into one mishmash. And I can sort of see where they're coming from. It does seem a bit hypocritical, doesn't it, for one who complains when anime are poorly dubbed or subtitled these days to look with such reverance on the What's Up Tiger Lily of Japanese animation?
And yet, if you look beyond what was "done to" the show in terms of changing it from what it was originally...well, in the case of the latter two series that made up the show, what it was was originally not all that great. Super Dimension Calvalry Southern Cross was one of very few anime TV series to be so unpopular that production on the show was cancelled early, and Genesis Climber Mospeada was fairly unpopular as well. And the first third of Robotech, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, one of the most popular anime ever in Japan, was left relatively unchanged. In the changes made to tie the shows together, Carl Macek's talented team of writers—including, among others, Brian Daley (best known for his work on the Star Wars radio dramas and the Han Solo novel trilogy), James Luceno (who, with Daley, formed the writing duo of "Jack McKinney" that novelized Robotech), and one of the writers who helped with Babylon Five—forged a much stronger series out of the alloy of the three than any of them individually. The story takes on a certain sweep, a certain greatness...well, I suppose if you hate Robotech, I'm not going to convince you.
But the other thing is, Robotech is a great part of my childhood. Perhaps one of the greatest; there's certainly a reason that to this day my net moniker is Robotech_Master. Robotech was one of the first anime shows I ever saw...certainly the first that I was able to follow as a series from start to finish. It was certainly the longest in terms of plot...85 half-hour episodes. I'm not even sure whether, before I saw it, I was even aware that a show could go on for that long, have that much story to tell. I vaguely remember how I felt on first seeing it...I had seen some of Transformers and thought that was pretty cool...but they were these giant robots, and somehow distant, unreachable for being that. But here was the idea that a human being could pilot a "transformer" and use it to fight the enemy. I was hooked, and so were my brothers. Hooked enough to get up at 6 a.m. Saturday and tune in a station that didn't come in very well to sit there and watch an hour of it a week. All through school, it colored my thoughts...I pored over the Palladium Robotech RPG (which I later found to be massively inaccurate in matters of mecha) and the McKinney novels (which I later found to be massively inaccurate in matters of mecha control systems) and made my first attempts at fanfic with some frankly rather bad works based on them.
And when I came to the 'net, Robotech fandom was one of the first groups online I got involved with, and a more contentious group you'll never find anywhere. Except maybe in Star Trek fandom, or Transformers fandom, or...well, all right, I guess fandom everywhere is about the same. Oh well. That series is bound up into a large part of my life. Maybe it's about time I went ahead and started getting the installments.
It's kind of funny, in a way...one of the big reasons I didn't get the old Robotech set is that I'd heard it wouldn't be remastered, the way AnimEigo's Macross would be, so in comparison it would look pretty lousy.I'm not really sure why I let that convince me to give the DVDs a miss. Perhaps I was thinking of waiting and buying them used. Perhaps subconsciously I thought that they might change their minds and issue a remastered edition someday. Either way, well...I'm glad I waited, because I'd really be kicking myself now if I hadn't. Funny thing, though...I did end up picking up the last six episodes of Robotech: Macross on DVD in Kmart a few weeks ago at the bargain price of $6. Now I guess I'll have something to which to compare the remastered ones.
Speaking of DVDs, another DVD I've recently picked up is the DVD-Audio edition of the classic Yes album "Fragile". I did this partly because I could get a bargain price on eBay, and partly because I was curious at how good it would sound compared to the stereo version I've heard already. Suffice it to say, I was completely blown away by the surround-sound nature of the music. I can't say whether the quality of individual channels is necessarily any better than CD, but then I've often had trouble telling the difference between high-quality mp3 and CD. What I can say is that having the sound coming from five different directions at once makes a lot of difference—like the difference between mono and stereo, but more so. It's a lot of fun to hear it.
Not much else to report.
