A brief rant about why I hate Harmony Gold -or- Why are you suing Hasbro? What's wrong with you?

Geek Rant of the day (regarding animation and licensure): So, I just heard that Harmony Gold is suing Hasbro for the use of a design in the form of an SDCC exclusive toy, namely "Jetfire" in scale with GI Joe figures, that they claim is an infringement on their licensure of a Japanese property that they subsumed into their own brand, name Macross into Robotech.

Two thoughts:
1.  I hate Harmony Gold.

2.  The reason is that they (I will refer to HG as a group of individuals) exemplifies so much of what can go wrong with the appropriation of creative properties under the guise of distribution licensure for the sake of sustaining business and profits at the expense of the original creators' desire and forgoing the risk of uncertainty from it's own creative expansion.  They gained the rights in the early eighties to distribute the Japanese animated sci fi classic Macross (and whose ongoing franchise I love), and instead re-edited the story/audio overtop the original animation, combining it with two other Japanese animated series to create their own multi-generational saga.  Admittedly, the series that came from it introduced a whole generation to fantastic scifi story telling elements with real emotional weight.  They were building on the great work of others.

Most fans wouldn't mind if HG had just let go of the original property and went off on their own to create their own spin on their Robotech mythology, gone into new territories, create new thrilling stories.  But they are hacks.  They don't seem to know how to put together their own quality programs, they don't seem to know how to market, they don't seem to know how produce anything that wasn't built off of someone else's hard work.  Their site features almost no redeemable piece of creative work.  I'll explain the almost in a moment.

The realization that they are sad, sad people came during the mid '00's when Big West, the actual owner of the Macross franchise at the time, restored and improved the original animation and sound of the series and released it as a sort of anniversary celebration for the series (their had since been several movies and series since the original release that may never see a respectable release in the US) all in lead up to a miniseries (Macross Zero) and later culminating the franchise's greatest achievement in Macross Frontier.  HG agreed to release it in the US under two conditions: one, HG gets to take the restored footage, subsumed under the Robotech paradigm as a restored and extended version of the television series, and two, release that version before releasing the original restored version.

Allow me to rephrase: they said, hey, you can pay us to distribute your work, but first we're going to steal it again, sell it first, and then pretend that we care it yours to begin with.  Of course, you can get a cut of the profits, or what's left.

There were three attempts I know of where HG tried to expand on RT.  There was a movie that was never released that was a re-appropriation of the Japanese animation Megazone 23.  Then there was a poorly written, poorly designed, poorly executed movie sequel, The Sentinels, which tried to combine elements from the three original Japanese series on which RT is based.  And then there was most recent The Shadow Chronicles, which was better executed but with a premise that lacked anything new and creative, building yet again on the old model.  There was a twenty year gap between the second and third attempts, and while the third attempt showed promise, it still came up short.

In the duration, they simply milked the formerly beloved, now dehydrated cow that is Robotech, and used every legal maneuver they could muster to keep anything from the Macross proper out of the US in fear that it would confuse audiences.  They had one loyal audience, and the audience grew up, and they have done everything to disenfranchise that audience from having any interest in Robotech.  The Macross mythology has grown and expanded to delightful creative frontiers, and American fans get to blame Harmony Gold for keeping it out of legal reach.  If they weren't stopping them directly, they had positioned themselves as a deterrent for American distribution.

The funny thing is that the lawsuit is in regards to a Transformers character whose original toy mold was licensed from Big West based on Macross's VF-1, an F-14 that transforms into a piloted robot mode and appears later in that series with rocket boosters. The mold was fantastic, considered a classic among many transforming robot toy collectors.  It that was restored and reused for Macross's 20th anniversary, and was never released in the USA (Instead, Harmony Gold licensed out figure production to an American toy company that squandered what potential success they had with poor quality and poor craftsmanship and high end collectors prices under the laughably titled "Masterpiece" subline).  Hasbro/Sunbow at the time were made aware of the potential copyright kerfuffle, and altered the design for the 80's cartoon series.  Every Hasbro toy interpretation of Jetfire since has been based on that redesign, rather than the VF-1.  This was the same principal that went into designing the SDCC exclusive toy.

So, Harmony Gold is suing Hasbro for releasing a GI Joe scale F-14 with a booster pack based on the Transformers cartoon design, because they do not want their disenfranchised fanbase to get confused with a nearly 30 year old licensed based on essentially stolen work that has done nothing but decompose in their weak and incompetent hands.  I can understand the impulse: they want money, Hasbro's movie partner Paramount has lots of it, so surely they can afford to settle.  My position: take them to the cleaners, Hasbro.  I don't care if it's over a toy.  Put them in a position where they have to sell their Macross license back to Big West so that us American Macross fans have at least a remote chance of purchasing an official high-quality Macross American-licensed product before Blu-Ray becomes an obsolete format.

***Bonus third thought: I really don't like thinking badly of anybody, and it usually takes a lot to get that kind of a rise out of me.  They've had over ten years to get on my bad side, since I discovered their bad side.  In Otaku terms, that two full length TV series, two OVA series in HD format, three movies, over a dozen videos, and gads of transformable action figures that have to imported at an inflated price.  Manga Entertainment had gotten lucky, but their video transfer of Macross Plus to DVD was horrendous.  The VHS version is never supposed to look better.  I'll take steps to try to balance out the inevitable negative karma that will come from airing out these thoughts, pet a kitty, hold open doors, have friendly conversations with people...

Giant Robots are coming...to the "Pacific Rim"

It needs to be pointed out that the Giant Robot genre has struggled to take hold in the U.S. as appealing to a broad audience for many years.  Outside of animation, the only serious attempts I can think of include "Robo Jox" and "Matrix Revolutions", and those don't really count.  The former was about giant robots as used in sporting events, and the mecha in latter were not giant.  I'm leaving out the Power Rangers/Super Sentai since it is targetted to a specifically younger audience.

There's been greater success in animation, but mostly in Japanese series adapted for American audiences (Robotech the most successful, especially in adapting Macross, and Gundam Wing in its introduction as part of Cartoon Network's Toonami) which later inspired similar series (Exo Squad comes to mind).  Transformers does not count as the robots are sentient, not piloted.

"Pacific Rim" is coming this summer, and it's directed by Guillermo del Toro.  What you need to know about del Toro is that he places a tremendous focus on visual story telling without ignoring character development.  "Pan's Labyrinth" is a masterpiece, visually spectacular and heart-wrenching in its tale.  He also directed both adaptations of "Hellboy," and "Blade 2."  He was an executive producer of both "Kung-Fu Panda 2" and "Rise of the Guardians" so he knows how to back a good horse.   He is also credited as a co-writer on not only many of these films but also of "The Hobbit" trilogy.  Del Toro was originally in line to DIRECT the Hobbit before Peter Jackson decided to hold on to it.

So, yeah, "Pacific Rim."  Giant robots fighting giant monsters.  Had I forgotten to mention the giant monsters?  And how del Toro was playing around with the idea of doing a Lovecraft inspired piece at some point?  Or that certain Lovecraftian concepts are woven into the plot to bring giant monsters to Earth which necessitated the creation of giant robots to combat said monsters?  Forgive me, Godzilla and Cloverfield have done such a good job of keeping giant-monster-generated devastation in the American consciousness that it had slipped my mind...

I still like Gundam and Transformers.

I just don't Love them like I used to. Transitioning somewhere, but I don't know where.

2 things I feel like talking about...

So, first, Transformers Dark of the Moon. Better than ROTF, in some aspects better than TF1 and in others not. Having seen it a couple of times, I'm starting to see what makes the movie good, namely stronger character development than in the previous films. Specifically, we actually get to know Optimus Prime, in the movie-verse, and gain a greater appreciation for his motivations. Sam also grows into adulthood, that is to say he discovers just how much life sucks and it's his decision to follow whatever course of action subsequent to the suckage and accept the consequences. Then deal with the consequences. Then accept the subsequent consequences and deal with those. It's a cycle.

There is no question the visual effects are spectacular. So much so that it comes close to making up for all the plot holes. Honestly, there were several points in the film whereby a change in dialogue would have gone a very long way to easing the leaps in logic the audience is demanded to take. Narrow gaps these are not, but no where near as bad as in ROTF. It would have been perfectly acceptable, nay, applaud-able, to make mention of the Allspark and to retcon its intended function fit the new film and suggest the discovery of the Matrix of Leadership in second was more of a boon than was originally believed, rather than suggest that the Matrix was always a factor. Give audiences a little bit of credit.

After much deliberation, I've decided that I like the movie, not love, but like. There were several opportunities for the film makers to really mess up, and in the previous iterations did, where they actually got it right, and I truly appreciate that.


Second, Kannazuki no Miko. An awesome anime series about giant robots of mystic origin fighting over the fate of the world that was really a story of the tragedy of intense love in disguise. You want some melodrama? You want this. Not for the immature, thank you very much. Much love for Himeko-chan and Chikane-chan.

It's an amazing time to be a Transformers fan...

So, it should go without saying by now that Transformers fans are as passionate as the fans of other great science fiction(fantasy) with large fan followings, namely Star Wars and Star Trek in terms of commercially successful product lines supporting the franchises. As far as the toy collectors, it is an incredible time for the product lines. The engineering involved has advanced to the point where it is really the imagination of the designers limiting the potential greatness of any single figure. As far as the fiction, it's a mixture of extremes.

The live action film did wonders for the franchise by bringing to the attention of the mainstream. It has allowed Hasbro to really stretch the potential of the mythology and the toy line. As result, there are three main branches of the current mythology: the films, the comics, and the television show. Each branch has a distinctive stylization in mechanic and character design. They each have varied in quality and accessibility.

Transformers and Revenge of the Fallen are based on the idea that these aliens could actually exist in the world today and the characters are design with that in mind, utilizing the mechanical parts of each vehicle to build up the physical robotic forms that are taken on Earth. The result is visually fascinating and spectacular. It also makes it difficult for the uninitiated to distinguish one character from the another beyond the general color: Bumblebee is yellow, Optimus is Red. The films also fit into the genre of action movies, which alleviates them of the need to develop these characters in any profound way, or to possess of plot that explores the nature of non-organic sentient beings and their societies.

Most of the robotic characters are based in concept and design on the cast of Generation One, the original series of toys in the eighties whose adventures were chronicled in the cartoon series and the comics from Marvel. This is where the mythology is rooted, the history, the origins, the politics, and the drama, which is the stuff the movies only reference or imply in passing. The characters are generally one-dimensional and do very little to pay tribute to their respective namesakes.

This leads to the second branch of the toyline, Transformers Classics/Universe. IDW currently has the license to produce and publish the comics based on this iteration of Transformers, and they are running with it. The studio that held the license previously, Dreamwave, brought the Generation One Transformers back into comics in a big way, but with what turns out to be the same storytelling sensibility as the films: utilizing the existing mythology to establish a point of departure, but relying too much on visual spectacle and sycophantic fan dedication for sustained readership. There were very sincere and earnest efforts by some of the writers and artists at Dreamwave, but without someone at the top who shared the same level of passion or intent, it all fell through numerous cracks.

With Simon Furman at IDW's writing helm, Generation One has been re-imagined, drawing from and respecting the mythology that came before. However, there is a weakness. While the characters are treated much better in the recent comics than in the films, the plots have become so complex and intricately connected that it's difficult to follow along without having started from the beginning. I managed to keep up through Devastation, but got lost when the stories started to be told through multiple one-shots and miniseries running simultaneously. This was the main reason I stopped reading the X-men books (which aren't bad, just a bit more than I feel like handling, and since I love Transformers more than X-Men should say a lot).

The third and most recent line: Animated. About ten or so years ago, Hasbro struggled with finding a way to continue the Transformers line due to increasingly floundering interest. They could only take Generation One so far (they had already re-released the original line under the banner "Generation Two"). Someone, I don't know who, came up with the brilliantly obvious notion of having the Transformers change into biological alternate modes. The Beast Wars was born. The best move they did was give the animation license to the CGI animation studio named Mainframe.

The reason this was a smart move was because Mainframe approached the series with the idea of focusing on the characters rather than just their adventures. They did this very well. Admittedly, they were sort of left with little choice. They were limited to a small cast due to the cost of designing, animating, and rendering each individual character. The result, however, was glorious. The smaller cast allowed the writers, and the viewers, to focus on the characters' interactions without being overwhelmed with increasingly complex plotlines. The true testament to the quality of the teams' work was exemplified in the episode "Code of Hero," arguably their best. Beast Wars, as well as Beast Machines, ended up setting a standard of quality for the Transformers franchise that most longtime fans hope to be met.

This is the story-telling sensibility that was brought into 2007's Transformers: Animated, a re-imagining of the Generation One mythology (drawing very loosely certain concepts from the films and the animated series that came previously, referred to as the Unicron Trilogy). It is very stylized, the primary designer coming off from the Teen Titans and the Legion of Superheroes animated series, also well done re-imaginings of long-established titles rich with their own history. Transformers: Animated's cast is small, every mechanical design unique and easily distinguishable, and each character a memorable individual. Like Beast Wars, the first season starts a little rough while the writers figured out exactly how to tell the story they wanted to tell. The series is cohesive and complex, just enough to maintain sustained interest but not so much that the viewer is easily lost. There are tons of fun moments and characters that you actually care for or love to hate. Their responses to each situation is believable. Best of all, it is unnecessary to shut the brain down or shift it into overdrive just to enjoy this series.

So, it should be obvious where my bias lies insofar as the current Transformers' continuities. I most definitely indulged in the guilty pleasure of enjoying Takara's Car Robots (which is more fun to watch than the re-edited U.S. version Robots in Disguise since it's unfiltered gloriously goofy anime) to which Animated is similar by embracing much of the humor that is most accessible to an American audience, whereas Car Robots had no delusions of its identity as a Japanese cartoon show, never taking itself more seriously than it intended (the pitfall of the Unicron Trilogy). The best thing to come out of Michael Bay's movie was that it opened the door for Animated.

What would be incredible is if the next Transformers film followed the same model as Animated. Imagining the realistic robots on the silver screen behaving with the complexity of the characters in Animated provides a source of wishful thinking, a small glimmer of hope. Unfortunately, the series has ended, and prematurely as far as its remaining potential for more stories.

If we, the fans, are lucky, the next animated Transformers series that will be due to premiere on the currently-in-development Hasbro/Discovery channel will not miss a step in quality. I'm not very keen on waiting another eleven years for the next great Transformers series to hit the waves.

G SEED Destiny - my take, part 1

So, this is a very good series, Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny. What gives it popularity is that fact that it is a Gundam based series, so big giant mecha based on classic designs and incorporating an exorbitant number of variations from various sequels, spinoffs, and miniseries really gives the series something to market. What makes it work is the story, as complex as it gets, and its characters. These are memorable characters, so many receiving volumes of development, each one with stories of their own, and with emotions and ideas so many of us can relate to.

What's awesome about this series is that it really takes an objective view on what happens in war. Anyone who watches this series should have discussions with other viewers about the messages and situations to really appreciate the work being done here. One primary message is that things are only black and white when you don't look for the gray. The moment you look for the gray, you come to realize that everything is gray. Only then should you begin to decide what is lighter and what is darker, what is good and what is bad, and what is love and what is hate.

The first series follows a set of characters who live in a world of gray while everyone around them live in black and white. "Who is the enemy?" "Why are we at war?" "Why must we fight?" While these questions have been wrestled with in all of the previous gundam series in one way or another, Gundam Wing's Sanq Kingdom being a parallel to SEED's Aube, especially in the miniseries 0080, 08th MS Team, and 0083, this series is almost relentless with questioning the entire idea of conflict. Debates, forums, and discussions over conflicting philosophies on lifestyles and belief systems are on thing, but actively violating a person's or people's natural rights (also a conflict creating debate) up to and including death is something else altogether. People can learn and grow from discussion. People are hurt in conflicts.

SEED establishes these arguments of grays, positing the very questions we should all be asking ourselves, and these questions are even more pertinent in the current global societal and social climate. SEED Destiny digs further, and even illustrates quite plainly how these conflicts even continue, whether from a philosophical basis, economical, or sociological. This is especially made potent with the use of a main character, though there are several main characters in the series yet Shinn's journey seems to be the most thought provoking and heart-wrenching, who is in every way a tragic figure. He spends most of the series running with blinders, but those blinders have been gradually removed and it's only a matter of time before he has to decide to look at the rest of world. His pain is as justified as anyone else's, but the question that comes from all of this is "who really decides to fight?"

First blog for some of my hobbies.

This will be the future home of my random thoughts regarding comics, animation, manga, and video games. And action figure modeling. Stay tuned for future updates. : )