Hello everyone,,,
Ok, let me preface this by saying that I LOVE Robotech. A LOT. One of my favorite animated series of all time. Great story, characters, mecha, etc.
That being said…
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I went to the Robotech Panel at the Saboten Con anime convention in Glendale, Arizona last weekend. I bought my ticket for two reasons and my primary one was for the Robotech panel. Kevin McKeever seemed nice enough. He gave out prizes for asking questions and seemed pleasant.
But WOW, what an absolute waste of time. Here’s basically what happened.
1) it was scheduled for 2 1/2 hours, it lasted about 55 minutes
2) he had a 10 slide power-point presentation about Robotech and a few movies.
3) he showed clips of Robotech: Live Love Alive
4) Told us how Warner Bros. has got the rights to Robotech’s 85 episodes to make a live action movie and Tobey McGuire is attached to produce.
ok, that’s not too bad, but when it came time for questions, this is where it all fell apart. Well, it was in the middle of falling apart at that point, but this is where the wheels really fell off.
People asked questions about:
Prequels
The Sentinels
Toys
Movies
Future Projects for Robotech
Here was the answers to these:
Prequels?
We’ve talked to the fans, they don’t want prequels, they want to look forward. (Even though the Macross series has released several stories/series/movies that go forward AND include a prequel)
The Sentinels?
We’ve talked to the fans, they don’t care about the Sentinels story. The books aren’t cannon anyway, so most Robotech fans don’t really want that anyway. Besides, they are looking forward in the story lines time line. (Again, the sentinels are an important part of the series, the freaking SDF-3 disappeared, but the FANS DONT WANT THAT)
Toys?
Well, we would love to make some more. Once Warner Bros makes a movie, we’re gonna crank out so much merchandise you won’t know what to do with yourself. But we’ve talked to the fans, we know what they want. Someone will ask for a toy from the second war, but we know more people want a cyclone. They want an SDF-1. They don’t want certain toys, so we aren’t going to bother. (Even I’ll admit, the second war wasn’t the most popular, or interesting, or good. But its part of Robotech canon, and to say NO ONE WANTS THOSE TOYS, cmon. That being said, I know I would buy minimal from that toy line)
Movies?
(we literally heard this 10 times)
Warner Bros owns the rights to the series 85 episodes, so they can do whatever they like.
Tobey McGuire is attached to produce! (This information has been around since when, 2004? And I get that you can’t leak much info, but to tell us ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of the project, what was even the point)
Future Projects for Robotech?
Warner Bros owns the rights. Any movies, video games, future music, etc, it all depends on that. And he PIMPED the heck out of Love Live Alive. And it doesn’t excite me AT ALL. It doesn’t look modern at all, it CLEARLY looks like its from 1985, BUT ITS REMASTERED SO ITS AMAZING (wait, its not. And even though we’ve got a company that’s so determined to move forward in the stories time line, but are so interested in making a movie that takes steps back from the Shadow Chronicles.)
What I learned at the panel was that Robotech, while being awesome, has essentially ZERO future. This is a company that lucked into Macross rights for everywhere OUTSIDE OF JAPAN. Then proceeded to do nothing with them. They did nothing to try and bring more Macross over, or adapt other animes, or ANYTHING.
This company is clearly more interested in defending their copyrights on Macross than they are in making more of this story line.
Macross is having its 30th anniversary. They are releasing merchandise, blu ray packs, concerts, the whole shebang.
Robotech passed its 25th anniversary a while back. NOTHING to celebrate. Harmony Gold could have really pushed the series out, worked on a blu ray release, toys, had tons of commercials, but we GOT NOTHING.
And we will continue to get nothing. Unless its going to toss a boatload of money into Harmony Gold’s pockets.