Somehow, I missed that Toby Maguire was working on live-action Robotech movie. I bought the whole series years ago. I think that was the first cartoon I actually saw deal with death--and cross-dressing. Anyway, my hopes aren't that high for the movie. Still, any day you can play a clip of Yellow Dancer is a good day.
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Robotech was the first cartoon with a plot that I ever saw. It is interesting that it holds up much better than most things I liked in my early teens. It is especially interesting that they essentially took a Japanese cartoon series and made a largely different plot on top of it when they dubbed it into English, and still came up with a pretty good product.
i just caught this the other day and was ecstatic. my first exposure to the robotech universe were the novels which kicked butt. this could be a great movie or a real clunker...i hope they take it seriously
Robotech was staggeringly cool when I saw it back in 1986 for the first time. Compared to the pablum DIC and Filmation was serving up to us kids, this felt like Star Wars. I will never forget when they killed Roy and Ben--in BACK TO BACK EPISODES.
I think I felt the way Trekkies must have when they saw Wrath of Khan for the first time in '82.
I'm a new reader you inherited from Matt so allow me to gush with happiness for a second: You're a Robotech fan? A liberal Robotech fan? I'd near given up hope of finding one of those on the internet.
In my misspent youth I was a regular on the official Robotech message boards. For a strictly moderated corporate message board about an 80s cartoon, politics was discussed with surprising regularity and there was a baffling amount of social conservatives, military nuts, and young republicans present. You'd think Yellow would have at least kept away the social conservatives, but no.
Anyway, keep up the good work! Hopefully you'll find some excuse to link to "Lonely Solider Boy" sometime soon.
I have been introduced to more geeky type things since starting to read this blog than I have in the last 10 years (while I never played D&D, I do recognize that).
Chris D who were you on those boards? I was (and am!) SSJPabs and joined dear god, 8 years ago?
It's interesting because Robotech is a pure on resource war and the cartoon (and the novels too, I am a McKinneyist and hate the idiocy of the RRG in the new timeline) is pretty strong about how dehumanizing war is to all cultures.
MNPundit-
I was Silver Tusk. I don't recognize your SN but then after the first year I mostly hung around in Lounge. I bet we probably posted in a few threads together over the years though since I'm a McKinneyist too.
And yeah, I always thought it was interesting to see how different people in the fandom relate to the show's frank depiction of war. There were a few people I talked to who cited Robotech as part of their decision to join the Air Force later in life. I can understand growing up wanting to fly Valkyries, they were nice people to chat with mostly. It was the military "enthusiasts" who got annoying.
Protoculture, where is my protoculture? Maybe one day I will find it. I hope Toby understands the franchise and does Macross right--and it would translate wonderfully to the big screen.
To this day I am still amazed out how they were able to redub, put 3 different series together, and still have it work so brilliantly in my opinion.
As for Yellow Dancer, and in hindsight shouldn't more parents have been upset about their kids watching a cartoon that featured a gay transvestite? Ohh well. How about this great Yellow Dancer video, "We will win?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwSvH-bsNJ4
Chauncey DeVega
Actually, "What's Opera Doc?", the classic Bugs- Bunny-Does-Wagner's-Ring-Cycle had Bugs both cross-dressing as Brunhilde and he dies at the end. Very powerful stuff. (Bugs also cross-dressed in many other cartoons--come to think of it, he may have had some unresolved issues).