There’s a scene in Project Eden which Mughi is watching a video screen in which several Easter egg still frames were inserted. Here they are, not necessarily in order.
Crusher Joe! Yes, before Haruka Takachiho wrote the Dirty Pair novels, he wrote Crusher Joe.
Images are rapidly flashed of the original version of the Dirty Pair from the SF novels written by Haruka Takachiho. These original character designs are by Yasuhiko Yoshikazu (Gundam, Crusher Joe, Venus Wars, Reideen, and many more anime).
Want ads from what appears to be Starlog Magazine. You see the ad with the Enterprise? That’s Space Station Studios from Massachusetts. I learned about them from ads in old Starblazers and Robotech comic books. I sent away for a catalog, and half a year later they finally sent it to me. I ended up writing a check for about $50 worth of stuff, which they cashed and never mailed me the merchandise I ordered. This was in the early ‘90s, and I’d never spent that much money before and was pissed. Fortunately I was a member of the Robotech Echo at the time via the local Anime Archive BBS in Phoenix, Arizona. I was able to bring about the wrath of Harmony Gold upon those buttpuppets and it turns out they were selling bootleg Macross/Robotech merchandise which landed them in a heap of trouble with HG’s lawyers, who don’t mess around. I very promptly got a refund. I’m glad that HG has finally worked out a deal with Bigwest to bring Macross officially to viewers internationally. They’ve been villains since the ‘90s for preventing Macross to be officially released globally and expecting everyone to only care about Robotech. Still, I’ll always be grateful with how they stuck up for a teenager who got rooked out of his money by a retailer that was either crooks or extremely half-assed and incompetent at the very least.
You see, due to an ignorant jury, Harmony Gold was able to win a case they really had no right to win, and since then they’d been using that ruling to stake a claim on the international rights of Macross that they actually do not have. This whole time, they din’t want people to be interested in Macross Frontier, etc. but just wanted people to forget about all of that and only like Robotech. But now it seems that those bastards are finally going to let international Macross fans own legitimate, English-language versions of Macross. It’s crazy. HG would even allow American toymakers to produce DYRL movie-version Valkyrie toys, but have refused to allow the movie to be released officially in English. Bastards. Well, hopefully things will start to change now. I still couldn’t care less about Macross 7 though. The first time I saw it, I was rolling on the floor laughing at how stupid it was. Anyhow, back to the easter eggs.
More want-ads. This one is for conventions.
Spock! The creators of the Dirty Pair show were definitely Star Trek fans (the design of the TV version’s Lovely Angel ship is definitely Trek-inspired). It came full circle with Star Trek: TNG with plenty of Dirty Pair references. The show’s set designer (I forget his name) was a big fan of the Pair. Even the robot Nanmo was used in the show as a robot that services the ship’s Jeffries’ Tubes. IIRC, there’s a Dirty Pair poster in one of the characters’ living quarters, but it was never shown on-camera.
She looks familiar, but I dunno who this is. Is she from Gundam? If you know, let me know.
There are some other freeze frames, but I couldn’t make any sense from them.
(This article is reposted from my Tumblr feed.)