For those of you who were unable to come to AX, we've got a summary here of Robotech's presence at Anime Expo! 2002 marks the very first time Robotech has had a presence at an Anime Expo, and it was a huge blast!

ROBOTECH BOOTH

The centerpiece of the Robotech booth was TDK Mediactive's huge game booth from the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The game booth was so large that it was visible from every corner of the Anime Expo's main hall, and doubled as a pedestal for a pair of Toynami's Super-Scale Veritech statues! The booth also sported 3 giant wide-screen plasma monitors, each one measuring 50 inches! On two of the plasma screens were an Xbox and Playstation 2, both playing prototype versions of the Robotech: Battlecry videogame. The third plasma screen featured episodes from Robotech and Macross DVD's.

At the end of the Anime Expo on Sunday, we borrowed ADV's drum and started running around the show floor making a huge noise that could be heard across the entire show floor and gathering a long conga line. We ended up at the Robotech booth and started tossing out free Robotech and Macross DVD's to an enormous crowd that was chanting "RO-BO-TECH! RO-BO-TECH! RO-BO-TECH!" The crowd kept growing and growing and got so large that it ended up turning into a fire hazard and we had to break it up, but not before we tossed out several thousands of dollars worth of toys and DVD's! To the right you can see the crowd AFTER we told them that we didn't have any more stuff and told everyone to go home! Whew! Maybe next year we'll do something a little less crazy!

VOICE ACTORS

On Friday, several of the voice actors showed up at the Robotech booth to meet fans and sign autographs! The guests on Friday were Dan Woren (voice of Roy Fokker), Richard Epcar (voice of Ben Dixon and Grel), Steve Kramer (voice of Angelo Dante) and Melora Harte (voice of Musica), all of whom spent the entire afternoon on Friday joking around with fans and signing thousands of pieces of Robotech memorabilia!

On Saturday, the Robotech booth was visited by Tony Oliver (voice of Rick Hunter), Melanie MacQueen (voice of Lisa Hayes) and Reba West (voice of Lynn Minmei)! These three voice actors formed the memorable love triangle in Robotech, and drew a huge line of fans waiting for autographs, most of whom met the voice actors for the first time!

A reporter from TechTV also stopped by the Robotech booth during their coverage of the Anime Expo, to do a special segment on Robotech! Footage from the Robotech booth at Anime Expo will be shown on Extended Play on TechTV in a segment about Anime videogames. The segment is titled Gaming Gone Wild and will be shown Friday, July 17th on the TechTV cable channel. For specific showtimes, check TechTV's website

ROBOTECH PANEL

On Saturday afternoon, Harmony Gold hosted a panel at Anime Expo to talk about Robotech, Macross and future projects. Guests at the panel included Carlos Rodriguez (Robotech: Battlecry Producer at TDK Mediactive), Andre Alas (Harmony Gold Archivist), Shin Kurokawa (Macross DVD Producer, formerly of AnimEigo), Tommy Yune (Harmony Gold Creative Director) and Steve Yun (Robotech.com Webmaster among other things).

Steve Yun opened by talking about Robotech.com's one and a half year history. Robotech.com instantly became one of the top anime websites at launch with over 300 million hits since opening in February 2001. Robotech.com has over 60,000 active members out of 80,000 total registrations, and the Robotech.com Forums have had over half a million messages, of which more than half had to be deleted in order to keep the website running smoothly.

Next, Carlos at TDKM talked about the production of the Robotech: Battlecry game. Since there was some technical difficulty, the demonstration of the game at the panel had to be saved for the end, but Carlos spent a few minutes talking about his experience working on Robotech: Battlecry. The chance to work on a Robotech game was a dream for many of those involved at TDKM and Vicious Cycle, who had grown up on Robotech as kids. Carlos also talked about taking fan input from the Robotech.com Forums, and lamented that there were a few things (such as the ability to play as Miriya) that fans wanted that had to be left out of the game because of the time crunch, but hoped they would be included in "other things." The game development will be wrapping up at the end of July and will then be submitted to Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft for review before being sent off to manufacturing!

Shin Kurokawa was the producer of the "super restored" Macross DVD's while he was at AnimEigo, and was behind most of the acclaimed video cleanup on this classic anime series. Shin joked about losing sleep for an entire year and a half while working on the restoration and quipped that he needed to write a book about the whole ordeal some day. Shin credited many people with helping out on the restoration, including licensor Harmony Gold, a software company that allowed AnimEigo to use beta versions of their video software, and a post-production studio in Burbank that sent him a personal chef to make sure he was fed.

Andre Alas is the materials archivist at Harmony Gold who had to excavate Macross audio and film materials from vaults with outdated databases so that AnimEigo could produce the Macross DVD's from the best possible footage materials. Andre noted that they had received footage from Japan for use in the Macross DVD's, but it turned out that the film footage from Harmony Gold's vaults was in better condition.

Tommy Yune is the new Creative Director at Harmony Gold. Tommy originally came from Wildstorm Comics and talked a little bit about the history of Robotech and how Robotech is making an incredible comeback now. One of Tommy's first works at Harmony Gold was the Masterpiece Pilots illustration under the pseudonym Imaji Narigai (Imaginary Guy). Tommy has also been working together with Vicious Cycle and TDKM, doing character designs and mecha illustrations for Robotech: Battlecry. Some other announcements from Tommy's segment:

- Robotech: Battlecry will feature a new Veritech Fighter, the YF-1R, a retrofit of Veritechs meant to turn the VF-1A into a more combat effective Veritech during the "Reconstruction" era.

- This winter, Del Rey will be re-releasing Robotech novels to coincide with the videogame release. These will be omnibus editions with repackaging to match the chronological order of the novels.

- There is a new Robotech comic book publisher, but the specifics of the comic license couldn't be publically announced at the time of the Anime Expo. Maybe they'll be announced at San Diego ComicCon...

- This fall, Hero Factory will be releasing a high quality line of Robotech trading cards, featuring classic illustrations and all-new artwork from Harmony Gold.

- This fall, ADV will be re-releasing Robotech DVD's in new "Complete Collection" box sets. The entire 36 episode Macross Saga will be released as a single box set without separate extras DVD's. The Masters and New Generation box sets will follow about 6-8 weeks at a time afterwards.

- Southern Cross and MOSPEADA are expected to be released on DVD afterwards, in Japanese with English subtitles for fans of these original Japanese anime series.

- For the first time in public, it was announced at the panel that there is a new Robotech series in the works for 2004. The new series has been in preproduction for several months and Harmony Gold is in negotiations with a major network to get the new Robotech series on the air. The new Robotech series will be a true sequel to Robotech, picking up where the series left off. Tatsunoko will be animating the new Robotech series, with animation quality aimed at OVA (miniseries) levels.

- New Veritech designs were shown at the panel, some of which will be included in the new Robotech series, and some will not. Designs included an armored Shadow Beta Fighter with Synchro-Cannon armaments, and a "Gamma Fighter" design based on the "ConBat" from MOSPEADA.

Nearing the end of the panel, Steve Yun took a "show of hands" survey of the fans to see who had Robotech and Macross DVD's, and who wanted them but couldn't afford them. When it became apparent to the fans that free DVD's were going to be given away, everyone started seeing a lot more hands! Steve tossed Robotech and Macross DVD's into the crowd, and ended up giving away over $1000 in DVD's in a matter of seconds!

The panel hosted a Q&A period, during which a wide spectrum of questions was asked, ranging from several legal questions about Robotech toys to why Robotech The Untold Story wasn't available on any of the Robotech DVD extras. One particular fan discovered at the panel that the DVD release of Robotech 3000 was an April Fool's joke. Whoops!

At the end of the panel, the video technicians were able to get the Xbox video feed working, and Carlos ended the Robotech panel with a demonstration of the latest prototype of Robotech: Battlecry, a version that was even newer than the demo version being shown at the Robotech booth

ROBOTECH.COM PARTY

Capping off a great weekend for Robotech fans at the Anime Expo, members from the Robotech.com Forum and many industry guests went to the Rock Bottom Brewery in Long Beach for a Robotech.com party! Random guests kept showing up and our party kept growing, and the Rock Bottom servers kept scrambling to keep up with our orders! At the end of the party, Steve surprised the entire group by announcing that the entire bill would be picked up by Harmony Gold!

MESSAGE FROM STEVE

I've been coming to Anime Expo almost every year since it first started and I have to say that, with all the craze from the booth, the panel, the ruckus we caused during the Sunday giveaway and the party on Saturday, this has been the best time I've ever had. I want to thank all of our volunteers from Robotech.com who helped out at the booth and made the Rock Bottom party such a riot, and I'd especially like to thank our bosses Alan and Frank for making this all possbible. Now it's off to the San Diego ComicCon!!! :) -- Steve

WANT MORE?

Check TechTV's showtimes for the Extended Play segments on Robotech: Battlecry and Anime in Gaming.

Click here for the news about the Robotech voice actors reprising their roles in Robotech: Battlecry!

Check out our photo gallery and preview coverage of AnimeExpo 2002!