Q-RAU REVIEW

REVIEW OF YAMATO'S 1/60 SCALE 'DO YOU REMEMBER LOVE' TYPE
MIRIA 639 VERSION
QUEADLUUN-RAU BATTLE SUIT

Macross fans the world-over have long wanted a Queadluun-Rau toy, but until now, the only thing to satisfy their Meltan-mecha lust has been the 20+ year old Imai/Bandai plastic model kit or expensive hard-to-find resin garage kits by companies such as Yellow Submarine. That is until Yamato announced they were making a 1/60 scale Queadluun-Rau action figure, which has just now been released.

The toy I am reviewing here is a near-to-final production version. Basically, it's identical to the production toy. The only things that are missing are the instruction manual (not really necessary in my opinion) and the sticker sheet. Actually, I'm not even sure if the final production toy even comes with a sticker sheet.

First things first, let's get the one major point of controversy out of the way. THIS TOY HAS NO DIE-CAST! Zip, zilch, nil, nada, none! There I've said it. Personally I think this is a good thing. I'm not one of those toy fans who lust after die-cast in every toy I buy. Personally, I think die-cast is a bad thing in a mecha toy. Die-cast adds unnecessary weight to a toy, which can cause stress on joints, it can lead to a toy which balances badly or even has trouble standing up. Paint chipping is endemic on die-cast toys and what's more it is nearly impossible to get the color of painted die-cast parts to exactly match the color of plastic parts.

Overall a pretty standard Yamato window box with the usual product photos on the sides and a large photo-shopped picture of the toy in-action on the back. On the plus side, I really like the deep red color Yamato have chosen for this box and the overall I find the layout and design make this one of the most eye-catching Yamato boxes in quite a while. On the negative side, it's still made of the same flimsy card Yamato always uses for their Macross products. Personally I wouldn't mind paying a little bit more if Yamato used some sturdier card stock. However, this doesn't bother me as much as it used to, as these days I usually throw out my toy boxes anyway due to a serious shortage of space L .

Two points of interest regarding the box. Firstly, the scale of the toy is not mentioned anyware on the box. I'm not sure the reason for this, but it's probably so fans can't complain as much if the toy is actually a little bit taller or shorter than the claimed scale. Secondly, is the spelling of the characters name, which is spelt as 'MIRIA 639" on the box. It's not often that we see this spelling, as most Japanese Macross products use the 'MILLIA' or 'MILIA' spelling. Personally, I prefer the spelling Yamato are using as it is phonetically correct.

Overall the paint application on the toy is very good-to-excellent, Actually, there is not too much of the toy that is painted. Most of the toy is unpainted red ABS plastic plus some unpainted bluish-grey ABS parts as well, such as the feet, hands, cockpit hatches and upper arms.

Painted parts include black panel lines and the black trim on various parts (very well applied). A mettalic grey paint is used for the chest and wrist guns, verniers and vents. The missile hatches and eye piece are prodominantly painted white with black trim. As mentioned above the paint job on my sample was very good, with no overspray or other noticable problems.

The only thing that concerns me is that the white painted parts (missile hatches and eye-piece are painted with a matte paint and I'm worried that with handling the matte finish get dirty very quickly. I would have much preffered a gloss or semi-gloss finish for these parts to match the overall slightly gloss look of the red ABS plastic.

Height measured to the top of the Q-Rau's antenna is approximately 12.2" (31cm).

2 x Optional (swapable) open micro-missile hatches for the thighs. These can be swapped out with the closed thigh hatches which come fitted to the toy. The standard closed thigh covers are just pulled off by using your fingers (they attach by two pegs). The open hatches, which reveal 19 non-removeable micro-missiles just plug straight into the holes on the thighs.

The toy comes with a very nicely sculpted full body figure of the 'Do You Remember Love' type Miria 639 in pilot suit, which can be fitted into the Queadlunn-Rau's cockpit (the legs slide down into the backpack section). The figure is molded out of a single piece of red ABS plastic, with a separate clear blue plastic visor which cannot be opened, glued over the face. The figure is painted in black, pink and yellow. The figure even has a painted face, which can be seen under the visor in good light. The figure is not articulated at all.

The Quaedluun-Rau is very well articulated. If we included all the moveable parts, such as the various cockpit and missile hatches, I count a whopping 34 points of articulation!

Early photos of the Queadluun-Rau appearing in Japanese hobby magazines caused some concern among Macrossworld members, as they showed the figure having to be supported in order to stand. However, that was the heavy weight resin sculpt and this is the ABS plastic toy and I can assure you that it has no trouble standing unsupported. All the joints including the critical hip, knee and ankle joints are nice and tight allowing the toy to hold and keep a variety of poses without floppy or loose limb syndrome. The toy features some heavy-duty ratcheted knee joints to help keep it stable, as well as ball jointed ankles to allow the feet to stay flat on the ground even in a spread-leg pose.

The three fingers on each hand can by individually moved and the base of the hand can rotate as well. Another nice feature is that even the triple-barrel wrist beam guns can be rotated.

I could only find two minor problems with this toy, one of which will be corrected on the production version: -

The Yamato Queadluun-Rau was designed using Computer Aided Design (CAD), as was Yamato's 1/48 series of VF-1 toy and it shows in the crispness and symmetry of the design.

The Queadluun-Rau toy features a number of gimmicks such as opening missile launchers, and opening cockpit, and the aforementioned removable pilot, swappable thigh missile launchers, rotating hands and wrist guns.

The cockpit is covered by the head armor and left and right shoulder covers. To open the head armor, simply rotate it up and to the rear, making sure to position the communications antenna on the head in the forward position. You will find that one you lift the head to near vertical, it can then be pushed a few more millimeters to the rear, allowing it to tilt a few more degrees nearer to vertical.

To correctly open the left and right shoulder armor, first pull then towards you (they are connected to horizontal sliding rods, which slide into the back of the toy). One you have pulled the shoulder covers forward towards you a few millimeters, simply rotate them up and to the rear. You will then see that the shoulder covers have a separate hinged inner covers attached to the inside of the outer shoulder armor, which can be hinged downward if desired to create a different 'open cockpit' pose.
The monitor screen directly in front of the pilot can also be hinged downward. The cockpit of the interior is also nicely detailed, with some of the instrument panels being painted. However, the cockpit seems to be sculpted to more resemble the mechanical style TV style cockpit rather than the more organic looking DYRL style.

I've included some photos of the Queadluun-Rau posed next to a 1/60 scale Yamato VF-1A Max type, but personally, I think the Queadluun-Rau looks much better posed next to the 1/48 VF-1 toys.

Well, to be honest I don't know, but I'm assuming that Yamato will make other variations, so they can get more use (and more profit) out of the molds. Other possible variations may include: -

TV type green version - This would require resculpting of the eye-piece, communications antenna, front and side skirt armor and pilot figure, so obviously a fair amount of expenses is involved. Also, as well as the change in plastic and paint color, the TV version features far more markings than the movie version, which to look good should be Tampo printed on, rather than use Yamato's mediocre quality stickers. Personally, I think it would be wise of Yamato to invest the extra money to make a TV version, as in my humble opinion, it would sell the best out of all the Queadluun-Rau variants.

Emilia's, Macross 7 Movie version - Obviously, this would be the most expensive and thus least likely variant to be made as an almost total resculpt would be required.

CONCLUSION

In this reviewer's opinion, the Yamato Quaedluun-Rau is an absolutely fantastic looking toy, very user friendly and sturdy and thus has great play value in my opinion. Yes, it's slightly expensive, but I highly recommended it for any fan of Macross toys or also for fans of well designed mecha toys in general. Buy it, you won't regret it.


*BOX*	*Q-RAU*	*COCKPIT*


*MIRIA*	*COMPARISONS*