ARKARY

Hey, does anyone know if the radome and sensor fin on the Luca version will be able to come off? I want to get either the Michael or Luca version, and that would be the deciding factor.

Yeah, I've noticed a lot of people are trying to get the canopy color just right. I wanted something much darker than what other people are looking for, though, so this probably won't work if you're trying to just lightly tint it. But anyway what I did was painted it with the Citadel Paint's Leviathan Purple wash. While it was drying it was pretty much the exact shade I was looking for, but when it dried it gave it a slightly of milky, opaque color to it. I was fine with that, since I wanted it dark anyway. After that I coated it with the Citadel gloss varnish. When I did that, though, the varnish did something to smooth out the appearance of the wash, and it dried into that glossy, transparent color, which was back to exactly what I wanted. I suppose you could give thinning the wash down even further, but the wash was a bit tricky to get an even coat on it to begin with, so on the smooth canopy plastic something even thinner might not coat well enough to work.

Hey all: Long time lurker, although I never really post here. But since I just finished putting together my VF-25, I thought I'd share. Now, unlike a lot of custom painjobs I've seen around here, I wanted to do one of my personal paint schemes (inspired heavily by my AC from Armored Core, hence the GIANT FREAKING GATTLING GUNS), so ignoring my general lack of painting skill and the general complexity of this kit, I just dove right in. I must say, painting and putting together this model was quite a challenge. I can definitely agree with the statements that this really doesn't seem like it's intended to be painted. There's tons of little internal parts that are still visible enough that doing a solid paint scheme like this was tough. Also, the paint is enough to interfere with transformation a bit. I have a hard time getting fighter mode locked down because even a relatively thin layer of spraypaint is enough to cause some extra gaps. Also, even with a layer of clearcoat on it, transformation makes a lot of the parts rub together, which is causing some paint wear along the edges of various parts. But all in all, a great kit. I've got another one on the way, which I think I'm going to leave bare aside from detail paint, which should make things a whole lot easier.

It's been a while since I've seen the original BGC, but IIRC it was only an exo suit in 2040, and a separate autonomous robot in the original. Either way, cool looking.

Hmm. I don't like the way the intake area looks, or the fact that the tailfins don't fold all the way in, but otherwise they both look great. Are these toy, models, or resin kits?

I met Jim Lovell at some conference about a year or two after the Apollo 13 movie came out. I don't remember exactly what the conference was for, but it was really cool to speak with him in person, particularly with the movie still fairly recent. It was also interesting hearing his comments about the movie. Aside from the obvious Hollywood dialog, the only things in the movie that weren't factual were the fact that the three of them never argued while they were up there, and never blamed Jack Swigert for anything that happened. He also had some funny stories about working with Tom Hanks before the filming, since Lovell hadn't seen anything Hanks had done in the last couple years before the filming started (Forrest Gump). So as the two of them were talking about the last movie Hanks had done, Lovell was getting this picture in his head of Forrest Gump floating up there in space instead of him.

As of yesterday, my local Target (in Phoenix, AZ) had 8 Wiis on the shelf, so I'm guessing Nintendo's done a new shipment recently. As for Wii Play, it's mainly for the new controller, but as a roughly $10 game it's not too bad. Although I was playing Find the Mii and one of the conditions was "Find the two odd Miis out!" However, the game uses your Miis in addition to a few basic ones, so I had absolutely no idea what criteria the game was using to determine "odd" There was only one female Mii on the field, so I guessed that was one, but with the other choices beind Dr. Venture, Steven Colbert, Satan, Captain Picard, and Hitler, I didn't know who to pick and ran out of time.

...What if Toynami made one?

Well I checked, and on RT.com they're $59.99 right now, so if that's your price point, go for it. I personally think they're still a bit high at that price, but $39.99 was just right.

Actually, I bought a Lancer Alpha for Christmas when it was discounted for $40 at RT.com, and maybe I just got a good one but I love the thing and haven't had any major issues with it. I suppose that's part of the thing, though, it's definitely not an $80 toy but I think it was an excellent buy at $40.

Yeah, the big issue with a cyclone is going to be the posability of the figure underneath all that armor, with particular attention to the riding stance. The leg armor interfering with the ability to actually sit on it properly is going to be the main point to look at, since every other cyclone figure I've seen has the legs stick out at a horrible angle because the leg armor is just too big to wrap around a motorcycle properly. However, the leg armor on Toynami's looks a lot slimmer than the other figures/models, and if there's one thing that Toynami seems to do well in it's figures is add a good amount of posability, so this could turn out pretty decently.

Yes, you need to play a bit to unlock multiplayer and you need to purchase valks once you unlock those. But be careful though, once you've gone through the game you may just find some other mechs you end up liking better.

I always liked Lancer's cyclone, so I'll wait until that comes out and see what QC issues get addressed for it.

I should look into Gamefly, as there are quite a few games that I'd never want to buy but still want to try out anyway. Speaking of Red Steel, I got that with Zelda on launch day, and I definitely have to say that the best way to sum it up in two words is "launch title." It's a mildly interesting concept that, while better than the "total crap" I've heard elsewhere, has quite a number of apparent flaws that make it obvious that the controller's design was still new to the developers and they had to rush to get it out by launch. I've encountered a few bugs, as well as clipping issues that have enabled me to escape into the inky void outside the game's levels.

You know, I think it would be cool if in the movie when Prime first meets a human, he first says "Ba weep granna weep nini bong" before speaking in english.

Didn't you hear? The movie's a musical now.

I didn't say it made sense, just that they did give an explanation. As for blowing up the station, after thinking about it further I think the point was that since the resto f the REF fleet was sent there for repairs after the Invid battle, there wasn't enough defense available for the Haydonite attack. This meant that it looked like they were going to lose the station anyway, so the plan to evacuate everyone on the functioning ships (the Arkangel) and detonate the missiles was done. I think the problem was they didn't show anyone at the station aside from the main characters, so it made it seem like they were blowing up an empty station for no reason, when in actuality there were supposed to be other ships and people there and there really was supposed to be more of a battle. They just didn't show this, so you're left to figure it out yourself.

I'd agree with all those complaints. It really does feel like it straight-on continues the story, as if it were simply the next episode in the show. That's the problem with the story: it's basically an extended tv episode and thus simply doesn't have enough plot to stand on it's own as a movie. I don't know if there's any way around having the plot extend from the last episode of the show though, since the events in the last episode are a bit too important to skip ahead. And I will also agree with the statements that despite the problems with this, it wasn't nearly as bad as was expecting, or as bad as it could have been. It was certainly better than G Saviour. I think people around here are being a bit harsher on it due to the whole Macross/HG issue, especially in regards to the "American = not-anime" thing, but they do need to realize that if they want to be successful, they need to make their work actually good, not passable in some areas and terrible in others. I actually watched this again before I returned it to netflix, and I wanted to say that a couple of the plot hole complaints mentioned earlier (like why they needed to blow up the station, etc) actually did have explanations though they could have been (and were) easily missed. With the aformentioned missiles, General Reinhardt had a single line mentioning that it would take too much Protoculture to launch them, and with the Invid taking it all it's not something they can waste. It's literally a single sentence in the middle of another conversation, which is why I missed it the first time. But it's still not good when it takes repeated viewings and carefully paying attention in order to figure out why the characters are doing some of the things they do. The cgi is still just as bad the second time around as the first.

Those Prime and Bumblebee figures actually look pretty good. If only they'd put as much effort into Megatron/Starscream so that we could actually get jets without all that crap hanging off the bottom.

...David Hayter? If nothing else, he could do the script and dub over whoever they get to actually play Snake.

Oh, one extra thing I have to comment on. I love the line the Regis has with Ariel in the hive. She says something like, "Their new Shadow technology makes them invisible to our sensors. Here, let me show you a live video feed of them."

Yeah, they mention Maia's last name once or twice. And the thing that was bugging me about that was between Robotech and Macross as well, every subsequent release seems to feature a new and different Sterling/Jenius child. I'm just wondering where Maia came from if the SDF-3 has supposedly been missing the whole time. As for the station being destroyed, my gripe with it was I think I missed the plot point where they explained why they needed to blow it up, as opposed to, like, launching the missiles or something. And again with how much they stressed how important the flaw in the missiles was, it wasn't brought up once after the first missiles were dealt with. And I don't recall if they mentioned where Liberty station was located, but I think it was still located in the Solar system. If so, and the missiles do go and create black holes, then detonating them there is still dangerous anyway. The betas were annoying since they weren't shown to be seperate mecha once, and were instead nothing more than alpha FAST packs. And again, they are seperate mecha so the false tension in multiple points with damaged ones is really weak. And actually, it would have been cool, and probably fairly safe from a copyright standpoint, to include more Southern Cross stuff. There's no way they could get away with showing valks or any Macross-era stuff, but I don't think SC was ever popular enough in the US or Japan for anyone to really complain if they were used. Who knows, a more modern remake of some of that stuff could actually make it cooler.

I have to agree that the VF-0 is just plain better than the VF-1 since it represents a more modern, cleaner take on the same classic design. As to which VF is my favorite, I'd have to say the VF-11 along with the YF-21. As great an artist and designer as Kawamori is, most of his designs just have something that I don't like about them. In the VF-1's case, I just hate the way the legs/engines attach to the nosecone, plus the fact that they're not actually permanently attached to the valk. It's just not a good idea to have your vehicles powerplants and propulsion clipped on at a couple tiny points. The VF-11 represents an update to the transformation mechanism of the VF-1, much like the VF-0 is an esthetic update. The rotating part of the fusilage eliminates the whole detaching legs thing, plus it just manages to look like a next generation version of the original design. The YF-21 is just plain slick. It takes the Q-Rau design and turns it into a VF that isn't the conventional engines = legs/ arms tucked between thing. The fact that it manages to pack arms and legs into it that aren't part of the the actual plane design is really interesting.

Well I just got done watching this, so here's my thoughts. My biggest gripe was how incomplete it was. Or rather, how nothing of any importance really happened. It's obvious that the movie is a lead-up to a new tv series, but even with that in mind the plot of this was for lack of a better term, pointless. The Haydonites, that no one around Earth knows about, turn on the humans, so we need to... blow up a space station? It's apparent that you need to know about Robotech and really the Sentinel stuff as well because aside from a couple bits on the Invid's invasion and what Protoculture is the movie doesn't tell you anything else and just assumes you're up to speed on everything up to this point. The differences in plot between the end of the tv show and this didn't seem like a huge deal though, and the lack of the other Freedom Fighters wasn't really a problem as they didn't factor into the plot. The show did have a new cast of characters and it would have been too bogged down if they referenced every character possible. But why didn't the REF fleet just send a 2nd ship after the SDF-3, since they knew exactly where it was and it wasn't going anywhere. It's not like the Icarus itself was the only ship available, especially after the invid up and left. Oh, and the the flaw in the neutron missiles (whatever it was, they never actually say) is totally forgotten when they blow them all up and blow up the big space station. Hopefully it wasn't something like deadly radiation that will hit Earth anyway and wipe out all life or something. One thing that I kept shouting out at the screen while I watched it was whenever someone got their Beta shot up, they should just detach it because, you know, it can do that. However, this seemed to have escaped the minds of every single character, as the damaged Betas didn't explode for quite some time. Frankly I'm surprised Maia even realized the ejection system was there. Speaking of Maia, when I heard her name: Maia Sterling, my only thought was, "Oh god, not another one." Between this and the assortment of offspring in the various Macross works, it's getting to the point where Max and Milia can start forming an entire army of their own consisting of their assorted children. As for the animation and stuff, I didn't think there was a problem with the 2d hand drawn stuff. The skin-tight jumpsuits are kinda dumb for uniforms, but whatever. With the 3d stuff it was apparent they were trying for a simplified style that seemed more like animation, but they got "simplified cel-shading" mixed up with "blocky and no-animation." The lack of movement in the mechs was more annoying than the basic graphics. The way Alphas would soar through space locked in a rigid pose was jarring compared to other mecha shows where the things actually move their limbs. The drastic reduction in the number of missiles fired compared to the obscene volleys we're used to was a little disappointing too. Overall, on it's own it's a terrible movie as it relies way too much on previous Robotech knowledge, but as an addition to the Robotech story/pilot to a new series I didn't think it was too bad. The writing was a bit stiff and had some gaping plot holes that could have been rewritten to still keep the same plot elements without being stupidly contrived, but considering the source material (Robotech) it certainly wasn't significantly worse. It's definately the sort of thing that could be improved over time if they had a series to work with. As to whether or not I'd be interested in a new Robotech series based off this, I'm not sure. I could definately see it working, as the premise is fairly interesting and would definately help Robotech take it's own direction as opposed to being a straight ripoff/mish-mash of other shows. They'd definatly have to do something about the 3d animation, and think about the plot points a bit better, though.