Harmony Gold, the company behind Robotech, canceled their Robotech Academy Kickstarter project August 2nd, six days before the project’s deadline. Robotech Academy had received about $200,000 in pledges, far short of the $500,000 goal.
Robotech Academy, if successfully funded, was to have been a sequel to Robotech II: The Sentinels, itself a short-lived original sequel to Robotech from the 1980s. Harmony Gold had planned to produce a 24-minute pilot episode for the series with the Kickstarter funds.
Though it garnered a lot of support from Robotech fans, the Robotech Academy Kickstarter was controversial from the beginning, with many detractors of Harmony Gold pledging the minimum amount in order to participate in discussion about Harmony Gold’s handling of the rights to Macross, from which Robotech is partially derived (only backers can leave comments on Kickstarter projects). Harmony Gold even acknowledged this, creating a tongue-in-cheek “enemy spy” backer tier.
Harmony Gold was also asking much more than other comparable Kickstarter anime projects: 2012’s Kick-Heart had a $150,000 goal, as did Studio Trigger’s Little Witch Academia 2 (though both projects eventually exceeded that amount).
Harmony Gold will “continue to explore its options” regarding Robotech Academy, according to Anime News Network.
Source: ANN
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