Yeah Reino, that's a pretty good list of things that 7 is kinda mix of. I was so hyped to hear about a new series in the pages of Animerica mag circa '94. I had the Kiseki dubs of Macross II and thought they were beautiful, even if the VA was funny. Then the mecha designs for 7 started coming through on the pages of future issues and I was like "huh?" Mylene's design was hot though and I bought the Macross 7 animation materials book just because it had Mylene on the cover and was available at Kinokuniya or Japan Book Plaza in Sydney then. Kawamori is an idiot except for the original valk perfect transformation, Mikimoto is a master. Then Plus was big on VHS here and my friends loved it. I was always like "this ain't Macross tho".

I didn't see 7 until I borrowed a bootleg DVD set from someone probably '03. It lost me at the mech designs, space vampires, horrible space combat dogfight footage (constantly reused) and the same song on repeat for the first 15 episodes. There is a small fate of the Megaroad/origin of the Supervision Army payoff at the end that somehow grabbed me at the time but I can't even remember what it was exactly.

I have diavowed it for a long time and ascribe to the Big West canon which got me banned on Macross World forums. I saw 0 (kinda the coolest Kawamori verse show imo) , watched half of Frontier and then gave up. I don't even know what the latest Macross show is, don't care either. I heard it went full retard moe/let's appeal to women college students.

I think what happened to Macross is very similar to what happened with Star Wars, one guy, given unlimited control, ruins everything. The originals were collaborations between many talents and the best ideas all rose to the top in the final products. Kawamori isn't a director, he's an engineer/designer with essentially one good design he's riffed off for 40 years, kind of a hack in a way.

Whereas Itano is a DIRECTOR. That's why you have so many incredible sequences in the original show, nothing to do with Kawamori.

Dynamite, while pretty, was pointless. It might appeal to peacenick space rockers like SoZ though? I was always mostly into Macross because it was a WAR story. Maybe SoZ likes the episode where Vermillion team tries to disable the enemy pods instead of kill them. That appraoch gladly ends pretty fast because war is hell man...

I like Evangelion except the ending. Just the stylisation and mad Gainax super referential design all in super high frame rates. The design of EVERYTHING in that world is so cool, from Shinji's SDAT walkman to the beer deployment rack in Misato's fridge. It marks the end of anime for me.

My favorite version of Urusei Yatsura is To Love Ru.

I've been watching the 1970s Babel II anime lately and while I've never read the manga, I can kind of see where it diverts anyway because of a noticeable dip in quality.

Ropuros loses its skin for some reason and Babel stops wearing the school uniform all the time.

I read the entirety of that manga…I’ve forgotten a lot of it. I have the 90s OVA but have yet to watch it!

My favorite Babel II thing is Giant Robo.

Babel starts flying around in this dinky little UFO too that just screams "we need to sell toys with this thing". I can almost imagine the discourse that must've taken place for Ropuros sudden change of appearance, too.

I'll probably re-watch the Giant Robo OVA at some point, now that I can actually catch all the references to Yokoyama's other works, at least the science fiction ones.

I also need to watch the Babel II ova. I picked up the BD awhile back. Currently in the middle of a few series though.

That's odd since I don't believe they made any toys for Babel at all, only way I ever found out about this was from the LD.
Unless there was a random candy toy or vinyl that I forgot about, probably only a super small handful of toys for this series.
I think they made more Inazuman toys back in the day then Babel.
And I can only think of about 5 or 6 toys ever made for Inazuman, and I own 3 of them.

I don’t remember any Babel II toys that aren’t at least as old as the OVA but I have some books I can check when I get home.

Oh, I was talking about the original series from the 70s, for the OVA possibly something made by Yutaka or another company later in the 90s or when the OVA was released.

That’s what I mean. I agree the toys from the original period are scarce if they exist at all. I only found a papercraft thing that probably came with a magazine.

Now there are loads of Babel things. There’s a Jumbo that looks 50 years old but it’s modern. There’s a Soul of Chougokin, capsule series, etc.

It's perfectly possible it just went through the same kind of executive meddling as Devilman did, albeit for less. There's a noticeable tone change in the 1970s Devilman anime too, after parents complained about it being too horrifying, and I'm guessing Babel II went through something similar with Ropuros as the robot look is considerably less menacing looking. The UFO might simply be something they added because they thought kids would like it.

Well, Devilman was pretty horrifying. The manga is anyway.

Babel as a manga reads like a very simple one dimension story about a child given superpowers and his arch enemy. Neither can die and they fight forever. It’s honestly pretty stupid how long it goes on with the same thing. It’s also very very low on character development. Babel leaves his normal human life pretty early on and […Komei…maybe? bad guy] didn’t have any henchmen I still remember. It kinda was like a toy sponsored show even then it’s extreme simplicity and repetition. It’s possible that it was considered to be not representing good Japanese values or something but not uniquely so. Go Nagai and Yudetamago were much much more violent in weekly boys manga. Maybe it was the way he abandoned his mother? It’s very much like an attempt to be Tezuka and simply not hitting any of the buttons hard enough of often enough. It’s mediocre. I did finish it.

When it comes to toys…you know those super low end toys like “Suction cup dart gun”, “squirt gun”, “spark gun”, “top”, “helicopter” etc where they weren’t made for any one character so they’d make a Spider-Man one and a Gundam one and a Ultra one and most of them didn’t make sense because The Incredible Hulk never used a friggn helicopter? Maybe his UFO was one of those things?

Chie the Brat tv series 1981

Really fantastic series. Directed by Isao Takahata so that isn't too surprising.

Sounds like it'd be perfect for a weekly cartoon adaptation but pretty dull to actually read.

I think the only Yokoyama manga I've ever actually read was Mars. And Giant Robo, but I think that was only two chapters anyway??

Does it have communist and/or Imperial Japanese apologist themes like his other work that you picked up on?

I've been watching a lot of Dougram LDs lately. Up to Box 2 ep40 and it's really drawing me in again after a lot of eps of "wtf?". The so far boring corporate macinations actually make sense now. The politics all make sense and everyone's fighting for something clear now. And I actually started caring about a character or two. No, not the annoying as F Deloyarans, but a group of Feddie Combat Armor pilots that are focused on for a few episodes.

This show brings a lot of moral ambiguity I guess copying the trend in Gundam. The whole setup initially seems like a Gundam rip but then there's a lot of uniqueness in the sci fi of it and also Takahashi's take on mecha combat, much closer to what actual mecha combat would be like in real life. Dougram does still have a few grating moments of Gundam like inexplicable invulnerability though..I guess forced on Takahashi by Sunrise...I'm looking forward to finally watching the whole of Votoms after this and seeing if it's closer to what I so far perceive Takahashi's true vision for "real robot" was. What I think his ideas are come through a lot in Dougram but then you get hero mecha resolution often (Sunrise influence).

Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. If I didn't know any better I would think this was animated at 720P because the Blu-ray isn't that detailed.

I did watch the first couple episodes of the series as well, that was a trip. Haven't seen that since 2006.

I prefer the sub and i'm a Wendee Lee fan, but the dub is so bad.

Watched the stunning and Beautiful Japanese Blu-Ray of Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro is on the way in the mail for me to watch next.

Since it’s late summer and the wind is in the trees I put in Totoro for the first time in a while so my kid and I could watch it again. First we watched it in Japanese for the Surround. The next night was English. I ran the one from the box set specially just to get the Streamline dub that I have a fondness for combined with the HD remaster.

I pretty much live in a forest so this movie always works. Every year I’m more attached to it.

We need to get a new Blu-ray. We only have the Disney one and the menus and ads suck.