Unfortunately I don’t see the level of interest changing for the foreseeable future, for all the reasons I listed earlier. The fandom has carried the burden of promoting the series for far too long. Until such time that something on either the big screen or small screen happens, I fear that the Robotech fandom will remain a shadow of its former glory. There is no doubt in my mind that there are still plenty of fans, and many who have written, drawn and animated some amazing fan-fiction, but Harmony Gold has repeatedly failed to take advantage of that talent and energy and burned a number of bridges. If they could get their act together with Big West and Tatsunoko, perhaps they can revitalize it. Until then, it’ll largely be this small group of dedicated fans keeping this place afloat. Maybe the upcoming games will help somewhat, but will it be enough? I doubt it. As you mentioned Megalord1, we need an actual animated product not simply in the pipeline, but actually coming to fruition.
Failure of:
The Sentinels
Matchbox toy line
Shadow Rising
Robotech: Academy
etc…
Also the ongoing fight between Tatsunoko and Big West
And the ‘800 lb. Gorilla in the room’, that is the Robotech: Live Action Movie project…
Which after 10+ years after it was announced, still hasn’t gone past pre-production..
I think the decision to scrap the Sentinels was the biggest mistake. It started out as a perfect tie-in from Macross Saga to Southern Cross. It would have also kept the franchise alive.
I also see the Shadow Chronicles as a real disappointment, the character design was really bad (really, do all woman have huge boobs and skin tight clothes?) and it didn’t follow the original series ending.
The collector’s toys look cool, but are way out of my budget.
There are a few things I think could bring the franchise back to prominence…One, finish the Sentinels as planned by Carl and get it on TV, Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. Get a new video game out to coincide with the show, make it something that will involve people (long term, start at training and go through to pilot missions). Possibly strike a deal with Battletech to sell a “Robotech Mech package”. Get the toy prices down to something average households can afford, My wife is not going to spend $100+ to get me a Veritech! Really, look how Marvel brought its characters out of obscurity with some new movies, toys, and hype.
Yeah. The large breasts, and the skin-tight clothing in the Shadow Chronicles movie irked quite a few people However, back in the late 90s and early 2000s female characters with large breasts were quite common (Mokoto ‘Major’ Kusinagi, Samus Aran, Lara Croft, etc…). Also, remember we see the Battle of Reflex Point primarily from the REF’s point of view in the movie. So other then a minor continuity glitch or two, it does follow the original ending. Redoing the Sentinels as planned by Carl Macek would be problematic. The prelude comics already changed the outline as set up by Macek And that timeframe has already been covered by the comics put out be Eternity/Academy (granted they are no longer considered canon).
Yeah. The large breasts, and the skin-tight clothing in the Shadow Chronicles movie irked quite a few people However, back in the late 90s and early 2000s female characters with large breasts were quite common (Mokoto ‘Major’ Kusinagi, Samus Aran, Lara Croft, etc…). Also, remember we see the Battle of Reflex Point primarily from the REF’s point of view in the movie. So other then a minor continuity glitch or two, it does follow the original ending. Redoing the Sentinels as planned by Carl Macek would be problematic. The prelude comics already changed the outline as set up by Macek And that timeframe has already been covered by the comics put out be Eternity/Academy (granted they are no longer considered canon).
The Shadow Chronicles had major issues with continuity. In the original, Areal went off with, I believe, Lunk and Annie. And the whole ordeal inside the hive was changed, plus it was Lancer who knew what Shadow Fighters were. So they screwed up big on continuity! Restarting the Sentinels would not mess up the continuity, like you said, the comics are not cannon. It is my opinion that they need to make the new series, keeping with the original animation style and story to bring Robotech back to the public eye. The franchise has been mishandled long enough, HG needs to get back to what made the series so great or had the franchise off to history and possibly obscurity.
Alright. One thing though, the movie couldn’t devote much time to too many characters within its given length. So it had to be streamlined down to the ones that were used.
Also, redoing The Sentinels would be a step backwards imo. We need to move forward more. The Shadow Chronicles left us with a cliff-hanger ending that needs to be resolved.
It looks to me that the smaller projects have the most success lately for HG, so I suggest maybe doing some small side-story animations, not a full blown series, but perhaps a small 3-6 episode mini-series, perhaps based around the evac of Earth or the Zentreadi uprisings between the end of Macross and the start of Southern Cross. Heck, why not convert the story for Crystal Dreams into a short animated story? Keep it simple for now.
I think X1 Commander mostly hits the nail on the head when it comes to what we were promised and what we have received. However, I would like to point out that he did leave out of his list of successes were the Robotech novels. I have all of them and really enjoyed them as they did a good job of fleshing out what was in the anime.
They were good, until The Sentinels books came out, which started getting a bit weird. Then the three ‘fill-in-the-blank’ books sort of went downhill. But The End Of The Circle went completely ‘off-the-rails’.
