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I can see the situation where (hopefully never) WWIII breaks out and after the first several battles most of the 6th/5th generation fighters have been blown to crap and, if it never goes nuclear, the war ends with air battles being waged with 80s/90s' era airframes because they are more numerous and easier/cheaper to repair and keep fighting.

We'll see- they still have the order up for being delivered mid-Oct.

That’s cool

This guy re-created the starfighter featured on the cover of Asteroids Deluxe for the Atari 7800!

M7 mecha size comparison.

I just watched with auto TL captions. I'd say it's comprehensible if you just listen for those random english names and model numbers and keep your eyes peeled for when it consistently garbles them up, because YT doesn't know franchise specific lingo. Quoted the two screenshots to make a couple points. The first is that the fighter mode's legs are nearly as thin as the arms. Those are basically the 171 proportions, if not possibly slightly worse. Obviously, those same proportions don't come close to matching the battroid mode beside it. A toy can only mirror one form, or neither, and it looks like bandai made their choice here. Second, it is no gargantuan beside the Blazer valk. This image looks about the same scaling as the DX YF-19 to the DX VF-171EX I have beside me. Unless the Blazer is supposed to also tower over the YF-19, it doesn't look like 17 could be any bigger than the 171.

Yeah there is a couple. The Cyun yan or translated spring swallow, Carmilla, Zouk, and Apsaras. there is no art for any others and possibly isn't meant to be, besides Yukikaze. but I am currently working on a decal for minx as this is the unit in episode 3 guarding Banshee 4. and affectionately named in honor of second lieutenant Anastasiya Kovalevskaya. the Ukrainian long haired blond of the unit. Will try to make it ethereal and sexy at the same time as it goes with the fairy theme and will pair with Carmilla. then i will colourize Cyun Yan. The others are in colour so we have the correct look for Zouk and Apsaras. Iv'e been researching Japanese Spring swallows and they have a red patch on their neck with a black and white body. And if i'm feeling generous will post them all here with an alpha channel. by the way; Open carmilla in photoshop and print from there as i noticed it is quite ugly on screen on the forum, but will print very nicely as i said previously. adjust the size of the print in the print settings by percent. Don't shrink the pic itself and it will turn out sharp and crisp. For those with white ink printers (If you have one I most likely don't need to tell you anyway) but make a copy of the decal that you can completely desaturate to pure white. Then print that out and lay it down first so that the colour decal is bright with the true colour when laid over the top. enjoy!!

I would like to link some photos here as well. Back in the day I used photo bucket before it became paid. Can anyone recommend a good (free) site?

At a bare minimum I hope Bandai may consider the folloing changes before releasing the 1/60 DX VF-17S, to make it slightly more acceptable: Shoulder armour resculpted to add the VF-17's characteristic twin micro missile launchers, which were priminantly featured in the anime Complete leg resulpt to get rid of the VF-171's leg micro missile launchers, add the VF-17's gunpod port, make the legs slightly more chonky and add correct panel lines. Make the crotch piece in Battroid mode angle straight down instead of forward. Beef up the arms as much as possible. Remove the hard points from the wings (VF-17 never used external hard points). The above is probably just wishful thinking and may not even be possible. To be honest, being a huge VF-17 fan I'd prefer a clean sheet of paper design, rather than them basing it on the VF-171 toy, but I'm enough of a realist to know that is not likely to happen, given the VF-17 is not a fan favourite design. Hopefully one day we get a better VF-17 sculpt in from either the HMR line or the HG Shortcut Change model kit line.

For further comparison of the VF-17S vs the VF-171, here's the 'detall-up' VF-17 lineart showing full panel lines and other details. IIRC, these pics were first seen in the "Macross 7 Animation Materials" book, published in 1995. Credit to macross2.net for the pic, saves me having to scan the page from my book. 😅 Interestingly, despite their simplified transformation and limited articulation, the old Bandai 1/65 scale VF-17D/S toys from the 90s actually feature most of the panel lines from the detail-up lineart. There is so much detail difference and proportional difference between the VF-17 and the VF-171. You just cannot use VF-171 legs and most other parts of a VF-171 and call it a VF-17......sigh. Being a huge VF-17 fan, the more I look at the Bandai DX photos, the more depressed I get.

Here's hoping no one has to die for this to be resolved.

I snagged a PO way back so have not been paying attention on availability, but it is currently up at HLJ https://www.hlj.com/dx-chogokin-vf-19-kai-excalibur-nekki-basara-special-banc676269

Not really a pose, just it's the only one time I transformed the SV-51 CF many moons ago. This was when Yamato's products had nice sculpt, but not so much on the tolerances. It was pretty floppy, so thereafter it spent the rest of its years in Fighter. The Arcadia's SV-51 feels so much better in hand.

Had the same issue as well on my Fire Valk, on that particular panel not lining up on one side in Fighter. It's just due to the mega stiff hip joint that makes aligning that panel quite impossible unless hips are disassembled & lubricated.

Yeah, I'm just holding off shipping anything until another option exists. Thanks for the info though, good to hear the details confirmed.

Yeah I'm buying next to nothing from overseas as long as these bs charges are in place. Something very wrong when shipping for an expensive toy costs more than the actual toy. Looks like all my stuff is going to sit in HLJ PW until a certain someone shuffles off the mortal coil and takes his tariffs with him. I'm saving a lot of money at least by not buying anything.

I first saw them about 1 1/2 years ago for a lot more, and didn't pull the trigger on them. Then they popped up again about a month later, different seller, and they were half the price. I recently saw these pop up on Yahoo Japan for a more expensive price, but don't see them now. If anyone is interested, they have a short story in them, some data on the valkyries of the game, and some character backgrounds. Other than that, it isn't a telling of the story, but the art is quite good.

NICE swag!

Lol, can confirm that I just received a 'duty invoice' from DHL. The breakdown is $24.91 on top of the 5200 Yen I paid to use DHL (since it was the only service available). Get this duty fee breakdown: $1.31 Regulatory Charges $6.60 Duties $17.00 Tax Processing Sooooo, if it weren't for the 'tax processing' charge things wouldn't be so terrible. Maybe Japan Post will get this figured out and be able to give us an affordable option again. Right now, it sounds like DHL is the big winner (though I'm sure their business is way down with everyone else's).

I think that no matter how good BRV AAM missiles get, there will still always be a need for dogfighting capability, due to rules of engagement limitations. Just because you have the capability to shoot someting down at BRV range, doesn't necessarily mean the politicians in charge are always going to allow it and there may be cases where visual ID is required, so a robust WVR / dogfighting capability may still be needed. Even if it's only maybe needed 1 time out of 100, I feel it's still better to keep guns and the capability to dogfight.

Bandai will just released it and after a few years release renewal one what you guys wanted. Bandai is lazy to be correcting expensive DX toy Compare to model kit they just do it right.

New swag just arrived.😊

Enough for today. My arms are tired. 😜

It seems a bit funny...a lot of war/conflict sequences (extremely over-simplified) seems to be this hybrid idea on how waring parties fight, say in WW1 or earlier...(and I'm sure Tora! Tora! Tora! or something even older) drives some of our narrative on how we thinks a Fighter plane/foot soldier, ship or whatever would fight in the here and now. I remember seeing the promo or propaganda on how the RAH-66 Comanche would redefine the battlespace of the future...except for what has been happening in the Russo-Ukraine war (I'm sure if you are a gunship pilot, you might have already have done a serious re-think about your job). I don't have the knowledge base to clearly articulate what I am trying to get at here...if you watch enough documentaries or see enough stories on how fighter planes (such as the F-4) did not need guns be/c AAMs and radar will solve all.... ...until it didn't. And then we come to 4th gen fighters - which had guns. The tech of radar and AAMs got better...well, most of the time anyways. So is the idea of getting into a furball past its expiration date?

@PointBlankSniper @Chronocidal Images of the VF-17 and VF-171 from the same video that claims the legs are the same. I can't understand Japanese so you'll have to re-confirm if you can understand native Japanese or if it's possible it was misunderstood (as i can't confirm it one way or the other with the link you provided). Anyhow, the scale comparison in the video displays the 17 and 171 vall side by side and i found a video just for the 17 and screen grabbed further images.