Tag Archives: television

Macross Frontier

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macross frontier splash 500 212x300 Macross Frontier
It took a quarter century, but it looks like we now have a true sequel to Super Dimensional Fortress Macross. Best known to those of us in the states as the first season of Robotech, Macross was a landmark TV series in terms of character arcs, ideas, and gee-whiz animation. Repeating the success of the series has not been so easy. First there was the Direct-to-Video series Macross II, which was relegated to “parallel universe” story status by fans and creators. From what I’ve seen, Macross 7 is essentially a 49-episode music video. The closest we’ve come to sequels have 1994′s Macross Plus and 2002′s prequel Macross Zero, which were stunning, yet all too brief. For a while there it seemed like Robotech was doing a better job of continuing the series by splicing two other anime series into the continuity. But then came Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, and the less said about that again the better. After all that, it seems like we’ve got a series that takes the ideas of the original Macross in new directions while at the same time keeping true to the original. That series is Macross Frontier.

The show takes place 50 years after the original Macross. The human race was almost wiped out in the first series by a war with the Zentraedi, a race of alien giants. After the armistice, the two races decided the most sensible thing to do would be to repopulate the galaxy. The construction of huge colonization fleets began, as well as further military development to keep the fleets safe from rogue Zentraedi fleets, or anything else that might come along. The fleet called “Macross Frontier” is the focus of the show. The protagonist is 17-year-old Alto Saotome, who enrolled in pilot’s school against the wishes of his Kabuki star father. This involves learning to fly in power-suits known as EX-gear, which serve as a basic interface for any aircraft known to man (I want one!). Alto and his stunt flying team end up doing a show for a rock concert starring “Cheryl”, the latest pop idol who’s taking a galaxy-wide tour of all the Macross fleets. During the concert, the fleet is attacked by mysterious bio-mechanical creatures known only as “Vajra”. A few of the space monsters make it back the colony fleet and start wreaking havoc. In true mecha anime fashion, Alto has to commandeer a damaged Valkyrie transformable fighter with his EX-Gear to protect Ranka Lee, the sister of Ozma Lee, the squadron leader trying to protect the fleet. Alto eventually finds out the squadron leader, along with his high school friends are working for SMS, a private military contractor that handles the jobs that the regular military is too hidebound to do effectively. He must make the difficult choice to join SMS and protect himself and his loved ones.

It’s been a while since an anime series has caused me to geek out like this. It was the balance of realism and the fantastic that got me into anime in the first place, which I guess makes me different from the fans who were attracted by the intricate power fantasies of more popular shows like Dragon Ball Z or Pokemon. I’m really glad we get to see how full-grown Zentraedi fit in to this Post-Terran society on the far reaches of space. Private Military Organizations like Blackwater security are active in real war zones today, so transposing the concept to a starship fleet is also interesting. The animation and mecha are bar-none the best I’ve ever seen. The love-triangle storyline of the original is also present, with both Ranka and Cheryl vying for Alto’s attention. Despite his pretty-boy looks, Alto is so typically male that he’ll be able to fuel romantic misunderstandings for the rest of the series.

There are a few nits I’d like to pick though. Some of the characters seem “borrowed” from the original series or other anime series entirely. Alto, Michael and Luca are basically Vermillion Wing from Macross, only prettier. Ozma Lee is essentially the same as Roy Fokker (although fans of the original must have got a great scare when he uttered “I’ve lost too much blood!”. That was how the original character died). I also hope that some of the major mysteries of Macross get solved, such as the fate of the SDF-2 Megaroad, which went missing 6 years after the original series taking most of the original surviving cast with it. Anime Directors have this obsession with ambiguity that prevents them from properly ending series. The term may come to be known as the “J.J. Abrams’ Lost Syndrome”. Despite all of this, Macross Frontier looks like it will be one of best anime mecha series in a long time. It’s too bad that due to some legal SNAFU with the production company it’s not going to be released until Satan skates to work.

Image courtesy of the Macross Compendium
Macross Frontier © 2007 Big West/Macross F Project, MBS

Screenwipe

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My brother has worked in the television business for over 15 years, and in that time my family was privy to all the bloopers and bureaucracy of the television business. Every time someone dropped a tape or forgot to flip a switch in broadcast TV, we were sure to know about it. For those of you out there who didn’t have the benefit of my brother’s running commentary, there’s Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe. It’s a BBC documentary series on the business of television. It goes into the enormous cost and complexity of creating a television show

The show’s most interesting segments delve into the thinking behind what gets aired on television. As a business, television producers don’t sell content per se, they sell audiences for the consumption of advertisement. So television producers essentially have to guess at what kind of person would watch their program. Sure they have statistical sampling methods like the nielsen box, but that only tracks the people that want to be sampled. This seems as reliable as checking chicken entrails in the age of contextualized advertisement. With the advent of Google you can now tailor ads to specific content. Ads are paid for on a click through basis, and the advertisers website can track where the visitors of coming from. That means that the effectiveness of ads can be measured without any invasive samplings. With luck, the next 20 years could see the end of the insidious practices of “consumer surveys” and “focus groups”.

Clip found at Mayerson on Animation.

Revenge of the Year in Review: Writing

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What’s this you say? Wasn’t James done solemnly eulogizing last year? Aren’t all the Year In Reviews supposed to be done by now? What’s going on? Where am I?! You are in front of your computer reading my latest attempt at improving my writing. Yes, I know, I get a lot of compliments on my writing from those readers who are not search robots (unless ads for phentermine and online casinos are a form of compliment), but wouldn’t it be nice if my pithy observations were made more often? How do I know if I have any skills to improve if I don’t use them? Long story short, I tried to write novel last year. I started in May and gave myself until December 31st to finish the first draft. Unfortunately, since I am not mailing copies to myself and prospecting literary agents right now, something has to be done about my rate of output. We live in an ultra-industrialized society based on results, so if I’m not pumping out pages every day, I have no right to call myself a writer. Since I have more time now to write, I’ve decided that if I increase my overall writing output, a 10 page a day sort of regimen might not be so daunting. So in the interest of volume, I’d just like to talk about a couple of things I’ve learned last year about writing.

The Online Market:

There was a time when pulp and glossy magazines were so prolific that a semi-competent writer could make a living long enough to find his or her voice and build some semblance of a career. With all of these other media options out there it seems like those days are gone forever. I did a little research, and it appears that this isn’t the case. Writers today are now making money from the advertisements on weblogs. I had thought that this sort of business model had been quashed earlier in the decade, but with the advancements made in applications like Google adsense, the effectiveness of online advertisements is much better managed. Businesses can essentially pay by the eyeball for visitors to their websites. Professional blogger sites like problogger.net and copyblogger.com have extensive articles on how to make money in weblogs. The advice essentially boils down to a few choice steps

1. Choose a niche. This can be a specific interest that provides enough research for at least one article a week. The target audience for this niche interest must also be computer savvy in order to grace your site with traffic. You can also generate interest by aggregating information from many different sources with a common theme.

2. Generate enough posts consistently to generate traffic. Googlebots love it when your site updates regularly

3. Contact advertisers with a media kit describing your site. Sure, you could make some money using contextual ads, but if you actually have that personal rapport with your readers, you should be able to provide them with ads they can actually use. This will also provide your advertisers with consumers they can use.

And voila, you have your new revenue stream. Blogs like Gizmodo.com, consumerist.com and lifehacker.com are great examples of blogs that make money. As you may have noticed, james-strocel.com is not in the format of a money-making blog. The interests are too broad, and let’s face it, it doesn’t update enough. Hopefully within the next year I can come up with a blogging concept that’ll result in some groceries.

Novels: Screenplays are for suckers

Even before the writer’s strike, there was tons of literature by former television and movie writers that both media were becoming creatively bankrupt. The shows were being bankrolled to enhance the names of executives rather than to make any real profit. Works of art simply can’t be designed like cars or mp3 players. The ones that worked the best are very personal and specific in nature, so to make a movie all things to all people is an exercise in futility. So why not go it alone? Keeping ownership of your idea is not only good for future income, it preserves the idea’s potential income. When you buy a movie ticket or turn on the TV, you’re looking to experience a personal connection with whoever made the show. Film, television and print are after all only means of communication, they are not products in and of themselves. You only need to look as far as J.K. Rowling to see that we live in the era of the billionaire novelist. The potential gains of the novel far outweigh that of a screenplay that may never see the light of day anyway.