1. The abiding mystery that has been giving the fandom blueballs for 20 year has been "What happened to Rick Hunter? Lisa Hayes? The SDF-3? Dana? Bowie? Breetai? Minmei? At the end of Symphony of Light Scott Bernard (a mind-numbingly boring character) left in search of the good characters. After 20 years the story answers none of the fundamental questions and just keeps them going.
What happened to Rick in context of why he never joined the REF in the last two eps & Shadow Chronicles, why he's missing, is addressed. In both the canon Prelude to the Shadiow Chronicels comics and Shadow Chronicels movie, we
find out what happened to Rick Hunter. Heck, we do see Rick and the SDF-3 in Shadow Chronicles, even if for small cameo moments. Read Prelude as well and that'll give much more insight as to how the SDF-3 crew ends up how they do.
What ever happened to Rick Hunter? His ship became a casualty in a disastrous test firing of the weapons his fleet attempted to use on the Earth, showing there was much more to them than meets the eye. This set up the Robotech Forces' new war with the Haydonites, with the possibility that Admiral Hunter and his crew may or may not have been killed by a black hole they inadvertently created. While not definitive closure and not showing us the kind of search we wanted to see Scott in at the end of the series, that's something.
2. Along the road to the biggest disappointment to the fandom since the cancellation of Sentinals, we are introduced to new characters we don't care about and the only familiar faces are people that were the most worthless characters in 1985!!!! Scott ("hey we found a naked chick who can sense the Invid coming and has no memory.... MAYBE SHE'S FRIENDLY!!!!!!") Bernard and said Amnesiac fairy chick.
What exactly makes Scott the most worthless character of Robotech? He was the
MAIN CHARACTER of The New Generation, the third arc's equivalent of Rick Hunter and Dana Sterling. If anything, having him back in Shadow Chronicles was an absolute must due to how The New Generation and Robotech series as a whole concluded. Heck, we got Rick back (both for cameo stuff here and in a main role in Prelude) while Dana at least cameoed in Prelude, you're saying Scott should've just been left entirely out?
Interestingly, the only really new characters were very small in amount:
Lone Shadow Chronicles Characters:
Marcus Rush
Alex Romero
Commander Daryl Tailor
Minor REF characters (Vince's helmsmen, the 'Blonde Female Captain' Prelude shows isn't Karen Penn, couple fellow fighters)
The Haydonites
The Awareness
While:
Returning Characters in Shadow Chronicles:
The Macross Saga:
Rick Hunter
Sentinels:
Vince Grant
Jean Grant
Janice (Upgraded 'Version 2')
The Masters:
Louie Nichols
Maia Sterling (From Ep 60 Cameo)
The New Generation:
The Regess
Scott Bernard
Ariel/"Marlene"
Marlene Rush
General Reinhardt
Sparks
We are force to relive the last episode (only different so they can retcon suff.
The concurrency is for the first 34 minutes of the movie, yes, but we have an entire 54 more minutes of continuation content after that. The concurrent first act in itself doesn't really retcon anything, as it's acknowledged that Ariel's "going
back into the Hive" for a second time after she and the rest of the resistance team were already in there. Thus what we see of her and Scott on Earth was simply offscreen in the last two New Gen eps after her confession of love to him and Corg's death, while the perspective of the Battle for Earth this time around is largely from the REF.
They CHANGE THE MUSIC!!!!
...To the change the music, they would've had to go in and edit something, replacing it. Shadow Chronicles is an original movie, one which couldn't just use the old and repetitive themes from the 85-ep series, which to admit would be dated to in such a project as this movie today. Shadow Chronicles required an original score, one which was brilliantly orchestral for the most part, at the same time it
did incorporate certain cues and pieces from Ulpio Minucci's amazing scores. It's subtle, but there. I'm going to ask, did you at least watch the whole movie, given the final space battle sequence had one of the most resounding pieces of music in any animated movie I've ever seen.
5. There were a series of novels that TOLD this story, the fans who read those books got some closure. Now those stories have been rendered non-canon and we're back where we started again.
Novels which had some huge inconsistencies with what we know as the core television series and what ultimately works as its rebooted timeline. It's really just best to look at the novels as they were basically always intended to be, an alternate universe. Even the Waltrips Brothers' incomplete Sentinels comics diverged on some interestingly different paths than what the novels came up with, Shadow Chronicles and the rebooted canon as a whole aren't the first to go against what the Jack McKinney authors did. Yes, the novels offer closure, but to the history of a story that is different enough from what the television show that it can't possibly be in the same continuity; even from the beginning, whereas there was no one aboard the crashed SDF-1 in the official continuity, the novel says there were at least two bodies.
So, why don't I like it??! Because it has a ROBOTECH name on it, but it is not a ROBOTECH film, it's more lie a two hour cutscene from a bad ROBOTECH videogame which they probably only did half-assed like this movie. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a better ROBOTECH movie than this crap.
In my view, there was no half-assed about how this movie was made. It had a moderately low budget which ensured the kind of CGI we got, yes, but also extreme love and care to the point that the production went roughly five years and had input by the most hardcore of us fans. Most of the VAs to the original characters returned, characters from all three sagas popped up in varying capacities, and almost all the CG animation did work a hell of a lot better than the Flash-like crap I've seen on recent crap Nick and Cartoon Network have come up with. I'll also go out on a limb and say, some boob issues aside, the 2D anime-like animation that stood apart from the CG and even transitioned into it and places was absolutely BEAUTIFUL. A two hour cutscene from a bad video-game... I strongly disagree.
I think that her and Scott are suppose to be on the same age or around each other's age putting Dana between 30-32 years of age. I also hear from the novels and other sources like wikipedia that Dana is suppose to be the ONLY person in Robotech who has the capacity to beat her father (Max Sterling) in a veritech duel. Now that says alot.
Actually, Scott's more in his early 20s, probably no more than a year older than Maia. Given he was born in space after the REF left Earth, at the earliest, he'd have to be born in December 2022. Being a Lt.-Commander at such a young age isn't too out there, given Maia's younger than him and the same rank. As for if Dana could beat Max in a veritech duel... there's no way, mainly because Dana was trained for expertise in hover tank combat! I mean, she could duel Max in a hover tank or small carrier ship, but as for an ariel fighter like the veritechs or alphas, it's hard to say if she could fly one any better than Annie.
Any Buffyverse comic that's post-"Not Fade Away" is non-canon, my PoV says. Denny Crane!
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14 years ago
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alpha4781
14 years ago
Man if you think Shadow Chronicles is the best piece of Robotech property to date, you should really work on raising your standards. Shadow Chronicles was absolute garbage. From concept to writing to animation to CGI to overall execution, it was just terrible.
For better, you had an established continuity with the novelizations and the comic series, so at least it was completed. I was able to follow the characters I loved from the shows, had more insight into their personalities, and got some closure for the whole thing. Sentinels, strange as it was at times, at least offered that. The novelizations were great, in light of HG being unable to get any type of stable production off the ground, it was the next best thing to the show itself.
For Worse, you have Shadow Chronicles. And like the Sentinels TV series before it, this is all you're ever gonna get. Shadow Rising is never going to be completed. This is all you will ever see come out new for Robotech. It's already been 3 years since SC and Harmony Gold will keep backpedaling by saying "Yes, Shadow Rising is still in production", but this a joke, and the same joke that HG has been telling for years. HG has zero credibility in the animation community, and they've only damaged their reputation over the years by pissing off just about every studio that was involved with the original animation. They are still damaging the name to this day(see the latest Mechwarrior dispute).
What's even worse is that Shadow Chronicles basically starts a new continuity that is never going to be finished.
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SilentDues
14 years ago
Man if you think Shadow Chronicles is the best piece of Robotech property to date, you should really work on raising your standards. Shadow Chronicles was absolute garbage. From concept to writing to animation to CGI to overall execution, it was just terrible.
You're entitled to your opinion, as all us fans are. I happen to disagree.
For better, you had an established continuity with the novelizations and the comic series, so at least it was completed.
Okay, to be fair, the comics and novels always existed outside the series in their own continuity. The Robotech animation never had any survivors or bodies in the SDF-1 after it first landed, the SDF-2 clearly wasn't back-to-back to it in ep 36, Leonard wasn't a mad man (in the insane context), among other obvious differences from the novels. They may've explored character motives and depths more "clearly" at times, but more often than not these contradicted or oddly retconned what we saw in the series, such as Minmei's goodbye to Rick in ep 36 being turned from an honest and genuine goodbye to her "secretly sulking" and Lisa "secretly understanding" and all that nonsense which, in my view, ruined in the novels what was a perfect scene in the anime.
Oh yeah, plus the novels and comics completely screw up the timeline. Whereas since 2001, we've gotten a much more reasonable presentation of how events unfold through the series.
I was able to follow the characters I loved from the shows, had more insight into their personalities, and got some closure for the whole thing.
And you'll always have that universe to go back to, no one is taking it from you. You can simply look at the TV series and its movies as an alternate universe, as other fans such as myself do regarding said novels and comics. For the novel fans, you got closure; for fans of the televised series and new movie(s), we're still waiting for our closure. Simple as that.
Shadow Rising is never going to be completed. This is all you will ever see come out new for Robotech.
You have no proof it's never gonna happen. Warner Brothers and Harmony Gold are still very adamant that it's in production, hell, even if it's just a comic, Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles' new TPB release has given us some slightly new material. Matter of fact, news flash, we're getting a new animated project in one year. Read about it here:
http://www.robotech.com/community/forum/read.php?id=2075615&forumi d=31
What's even worse is that Shadow Chronicles basically starts a new continuity that is never going to be finished.
What new continuity? No one ever said it was going to continue on from the novels or comics, it continues on from the television series. The core continuity the novels and comics are based off of. The only "new continuity", in terms of possible contradictions, in The Shadow Chronicles is the debatable issue on if Scott should be in the Alpha/Beta combo at any point in the Reflex Point battle.
"You wanna know what the only difference is between you and me? One. Bad.
DAY." ~ The Joker!
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