übermensch wrote:Ah, Seto-san still spreading sunshine, I see
I'm actually quite upbeat. One of the most liberating things about being a pessimist is that you're always prepared for the worst if it happens, and the rest of the time you get to be pleasantly surprised when things don't turn out as bad as you'd thought.
Whether this is "I told you so" or "I'm happy to be wrong" remains to be seen... but it's looking more like the former than the latter now.
übermensch wrote:Have you seen nothing in the Kickstarter that intrigues you? Lancer II? Ghost fighters? True they aren't yet officially unveiled but it's only a matter of time. One is eligible to purchase add-ons by backing at the lowest tier ($15).
Thus far, not really... pretty much everything they have on offer, I already have in a slightly larger scale (1/250) or am not really interested in. I stand by what I said about posters and wallscrolls, however, and remain ready to chip in once those I'd previously indicated become available. The scale'll probably be out on the Lancer II and Ghost anyway, since Harmony Gold got the official sizes wrong for those two... (the Ghost is actually HUGE, like 20m long, the Lancer is smaller than a VF-1).
Alpha 11 wrote:So what would it take then, in your eyes, what would get Robotech going again?
Yeesh... now there's a question with no right answer. How does one breathe life into a stillborn franchise?
Rebooting the original series isn't an option for legal reasons, and any movie is bound by the same restrictions whether it's live action or animated. Attempts to get the original series back on the air in North America haven't borne fruit, as it ends up shoved in a nobody-will-even-be-awake-for-this crack of dawn timeslot because it doesn't get good ratings. All of the various tries at continuing the story of the series have met with failure.
Robotech didn't really make an impression in its brief flirtation with video games either, and the tabletop game presently lacks anything to make it stand out in a crowd that's full of very similar games.
Hm...
Well... if anything, I'd say that the only real way to break
Robotech out of the death spiral it's been in since '86 is to have a new series that turns out to be a runaway success. The odds of this happening are pretty much zero, as Harmony Gold's oft-reiterated policy is that they'll only consider developing a new series after they have an episode commitment for that series from a network, which is something networks only give after they've seen a developed proposal or a pilot. The management at Harmony Gold would really need to change (or change their practices), and the new series they developed would need to be an all-new, all-original series and an absolute runaway hit in order to reverse the damage the franchise's handlers inflicted on it over the past 25 years. After they built some serious brand awareness, THEN they could expect to have some enduring success with a tabletop game based on that new series. They need that success so they can finally break themselves out of the rut of peddling small quantities of merch to the shrinking fanbase they have now. There isn't much chance that what they're doing now has a future, because it only appeals to that shrinking and increasingly disillusioned fanbase.
Alpha 11 wrote:As for the rest of the giant robots, I wish I was a millionare. I'd buy them all, Battletech, Heavy Gear, WH40K, Transformers, and the big action figure Gundams. I love them all!
Eh, if you know where to shop you don't need to knock over a bank to indulge in some giant robots. Moderation is key tho, because international shipping is brutally expensive. I stick mostly to
Macross stuff and my Warhammer/WH40K hobby.