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  2. Thom
    Thinking more on it...
  3. KOG Water Dragon
    Well. It's happened. For a while I was just having trouble getting new Bandai items from HLJ. New Macross HGs, Gundam RGs and MGs... And I was like, OK, I'll just have to get these local when domestic retailers get them. At least I can still get other brands normally through HLJ. But now... I wasn't able to get the Hasegawa VT-1 gerwalk, or the Kotobukiya Armored Core Steel Haze. Both went to backorder without my VERY early pre-orders being fulfilled. What even is going on? Between this and the shipping fees and tariffs, HLJ is becoming a lot less useful.
  4. Today
  5. derex3592
    Primer, pre-shade and painting of the BUFF this morning! Used Vallejo Acrylic Grey surface primer, fantastic stuff! No smell, water based and airbrush straight from the bottle. Also don't know why I don't hear more good things about Mission Models acrylics. They are fantastic! Water based, no smell, NO thinning, airbrush straight from the bottle, dead flat color and soooo easy to put on. Beats Tamiya acrylics by a country mile if you ask me.. 🤔 🙄
  6. F-ZeroOne
    Another memory bank kicked into stuttering life: when "2000AD" launched, the lead strip wasn't a certain Lawman of the Future, but a reimagined "Dan Dare". Originally drawn by Massimo Belardinelli and later by a certain Dave Gibbons (whatever happened to him?) the strip featured a "mothership" for Dan called a "Space Fortress" (I'm fairly sure, but can't confirm, the name was inspired by the B-17) and a smaller gunship-like craft I forget the name of (possibly, and suitably enough, "Eagle"?) both of which featured technical cutaways in the comic and which were great examples of late 70s style "realistic" spaceships. Speaking of Dave Gibbons, also in "2000AD" was "Rogue Trooper" which over its life featured some amazing "future war" vehicles depicted by various artists including Cam Kennedy and Collin Wilson. An animated movie, directed by Doug Jones, is coming "soon". I'll also mention "Starblazer", which will require a bit of explaining - a long-running fixture of British newsagents (convenience stores) were "Commando" comics, little booklet-size comics usually depicting war stories which has been going for a long time (I think it still is!); for a while it had a SF counterpart, "Starblazer". Some of the covers for "Starblazer" featured amazing late 70s/early 80s SF art, some drawn by the much overlooked Ian Kennedy. And finally there was a series of books that haunted second-hand bookshops for years under the "Terran Trade Authority" banner, being essentially a showcase for various SF themed work by various artists with accompanying fluff text written by Stewart Cowley.
  7. Morgen Black
    I utilized Nin-Nin-Game for my pre-order and they are still available at this time. They were cheaper than HLJ, too. Here is a link: https://www.nin-nin-game.com/en/moderoid/209702-moderoid-genesis-climber-mospeada-mospeada-vr-052f-stick-model-good-smile-company-.html MB
  8. rsvictor1976
    That’s awesome! Thank you.
  9. sketchley
    More nerdery stuff for you 😉: The big question is: is what we see in Macross Zero what actually happened, or is it an artistic representation? Based on the "what we see is what happened" and the "lightning indicates the extent of the mushroom cloud"*, we still have to contend with the curvature of the Earth, and the proximity one would have to be to see that much of the smoke plume. Let's presume that the plume over South Ataria is the same scale as the one produced in the 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption, that reached a height of 58 km**. One would have to be within 870 km just to be able to see the very top of the plume***. To see a large portion of the plume, Shin would have had to be much closer. For argument's sake, let's say his house is located on a 1,000 m tall hill. At 500 km away, he wouldn't be able to see the bottom half of the plume (the bottom 12 km [approx.]). That puts us into the ballpark for his maximum distance from South Ataria Island based on what was shown. As per the Macross Compendium's location of South Ataria Island (24N, 141E), Tokyo, Okinawa, and Guam are all over 1,250 km away; too far to see any part of the plume (Wake Island is even further, over 2,500 km East). However, islands like Hahajima and Chichijima are within viewing range, at around 315 km and 360 km distance (only the bottom 4.8 km of the plume would be obscured on that 1,000 m hill—well in the ballpark for what is shown). So while I agree that Chichijima doesn't fit the East-West travel, its location does fit with what we're shown in Macross Zero. That said, Macross is not the same as our world. If islands like South Ataria and Mayan exist, then it is possible that other islands also exist. Maybe there is another Guam-like island (in the sense of being a US territory and mountainous), somewhere near Iwo Jima (92 km NNE from South Atari) and South Iwo Jima (54 km ENE of South Ataria)—perhaps due south or to the south east of those real islands. This heretofore unseen, fictitious island would satisfy all the conditions surrounding the ASS-1's "landing", and be where Shin could be in order to see what was depicted in the show. * If Shin was on Chichijima, it would take about 17 min. for the sound to reach him—plenty of time for a plume to grow really big before being woken up and seeing it. Not to mention that plumes over nuclear detonations and volcanic eruptions also develop ridiculously fast... ** the sustained height is indicated as 30+ km—the viewer would have to be closer than 630 km just to see the very top. *** according to the Earth curvature calculator: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/earth-curvature
  10. geck started following What will Hasegawa do next?
  11. geck
    That's insane what they are charging. Looks to me that they are taking advantage of the situation. Meanwhile...when any of these kits come out...I can easily get them off of eBay with decent shipping costs and price straight from Japan. This is provided you shop around a little and are patient. Granted...eBay may be subsidizing shipping...but still.
  12. JB0
    It does. If I recall, some later print sources attribute it to the humans not knowing what they're doing, which is hard to align with the statements in the show. Not just Global Report, though it's the only part that just straight-up has to be cut out. When they switch from anti-grav to rocket thrusters while falling, Global says something like "at least those were made on Earth". Which could easily just be angry snark at the poorly-understood space magic that exited stage up... but then Global Report says the snark was justified and human error wasn't the cause. Meanwhile, the replacement gravity controllers are considered trustworthy when they're hovering over canadain population centers, so clearly the homemade replacements work fine. I think they use them when landing on Mars too. That strongly implies the flaw wasn't with the hardware. It is certainly possible that flaws in the terran-made units or operational procedure were identified and addressed offscreen between Booby Trap and Burst Point. But again, you still have Global Report's explicit root-cause statement denying that as the primary issue.
  13. Big s
    Could try hobby search or another site. Seems None of the American sites are gonna carry them unfortunately. Saw a few moderoid releases pop up on American sites that had preorders after the Mospeada ones and it’s been several weeks since then for Mospeada ride armors.probably a harmony gold blockage due to naming. Places like bbts usually have listings within the same week for preorders after the Japanese sites and often the next day, but it’s been a while
  14. rice_1204
    Here are a couple of my threezero poses with banked/angled setups in fighter and battroid. As expected, the gokin stand finally unlocks more interesting displays. I'm not the biggest fan of the gravity-held factory threezero adapter design but it works. As a test, I included a sample with an extreme near 90* bank, but I really wouldn't trust it to hold. Probably the most extreme safe fighter bank angle would be 30* or 45*.
  15. shazam
    TOMIX - FM-035 - Series E259 N'EX "Narita Express" x 2
  16. Scream Man
    God I love this sort of nerdery I don't think ASS1 turned. The only animation we have of it falling is the original series, and it arcs right down and in, not turning. I can buy slowing down, but even that may have been accomplished with modification of the angle of descent as opposed to reverse thrusters of some kind (Which we see no evidence of.) I'm also I'm not sure I buy it aiming for South Ataria as a way to aim the main gun for the Booby Trap. i mean MAYBE, and I have no evidence to support that it didn't, but it doesn't... feel right to me? Based on the condition of the ship herself? I dunno, I'm willing to be convinced... I lean towards it being the trail as it came in. The way the electricity arcs COULD be something similar to lightning in a volcanic eruption, but the way the scene looks and feels I think that everyone ran outside as the blast is happening from impact. A Smoke plume that large would take longer to appear, and I think this is a "This just happened" moment, as the shot before is Shin waking up from the shake from either the impact or the shockwave as it flew over head. I think I'm largely with Seto; It came in East to west, slowed itself and hit, passing over somewhere in or near California. Given the size of the Macross and the trail it left I'd imagine it would have been visible from a vast majority of the western coastline. Bolt says it even looks a little like San Francisco or somewhere near it, so I think thats probably on track. Whether it did an orbit first or not I'm less sure.
  17. Valkyrie Hunter D
    I cannot recommend the Entry Grade kits enough to anyone who wants to get into gunpla. The parts can simply be pushed off the sprues and the color separation is nice. I built the Nu which looks great right out of the box. It just doesn't have the fin funnels though.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    I dunno... the animation, and pretty much every textual description, suggests it's essentially a ballistic reentry. Macross Chronicle is, AFAIK, the only source to suggest that there was any semblance of control from the ship side beyond the unscheduled "lithobraking" maneuver at the terminal end of the descent, and it only mentions the ship slowing down not a turn. Depending on whether we're seeing the light and dust from impact or simply from the ship's passage overhead in that scene, that radically opens the field as to where he could've been. Shin could be in Novi and this would work. Sunrise on July 17th 1999 in Novi was ~06:10 and the Macross may well have been overhead around sunrise given the -13hr time zone adjustment (19:00 JST would've been 6:00 local time). Also possible. Though given that his home seems to have been unaffected by the passage of the ASS-1 overhead, and the ship is said to have cut a swath across Asia and Europe, caused volcanic eruptions in Canada, the western US would seem like the best candidate to be unaffected given a roughly ballistic flightpath. The severity of the impact would've likely caused at least some destruction in Japan, given that it was about 1,000km away and this was 13 times as energetic as Tsar Bomba, which blew out windows 780km away. Something to mathematically model later.
  19. sketchley
    I should have rephrased that, the ASS-1's course immediately before "landing" could plausibly be in any direction. In the sense of a small island in the centre of the ocean offers the largest firing range (there are no mountains blocking the shot), and the ship adjusted its course during final decent to "land" there. That line is a bit misleading, as it suggests that there is 2 suns in the sky at the same time. The quote above states that at "18:15 JST" an object enters the atmosphere above Burma. It's travelling at 10 km/s. The ISS travels at roughly 7.67 km/s, and takes approx. 90 min. to orbit the Earth. Therefore, the ASS-1 would have taken at least the same amount of time to circumnavigate the globe, putting its "landing" at around 19:45. As it happens in July, there's a slim possibility that the dusk light from the setting sun would still be seen in the West (based on Tokyo sunset in July at just before 19:00). Based on that, the "the other in the west" would be the sun, and "one sun in the east" would be the crash landing of the ASS-1. By that logic, Shin would be on Okinawa, or some place to the west of South Ataria Island. It's possible, but as a 2nd generation Japanese-American, it's also plausible that Shin had travelled back to Japan for a short time and was visiting relatives when the ASS-1 "landed".
  20. Seto Kaiba
    The Jack-of-all-Trades Who Was Kicked Out of The Hero's Party ~ A Swordsman Who Worked as an Enchanter Due to Party Circumstances Rises to Become a Master of All Trades F*** me that's a title. I can see why the localization team wanted to abbreviate it to Jack of All Trades, Party of None. This is one for the "Another Bloody" file. As in, "it's another bloody isekai adjacent j-fantasy series about an adventurer who is kicked from the Hero's party of total arseholes for being Not Good Enough and discovers he's actually amazing". Like, this is almost exactly the same series as The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become The Strongest just with a slightly different art style. This ground is so thoroughly well-trodden at this point it's legally an eight-line interstate highway. Definitely seems like it's going to be a skip-worthy snoozefest with nothing to show for itself.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    True! Yes, though the described course suggests that it continued going in more or less a straight line from Burma northwest for almost one complete orbit before hitting the island. Possibly, but given that the one thing Shin really says about it is the "one sun in the east, the other in the west" I feel like we're meant to interpret that as Shin lived somewhere east of where the ship came down. Guam is to the south and Okinawa is to the west. That and I just cannot shake the feeling that Shin being from California would be Kawamori's way of working his love of SoCal into Macross Zero. It's on prominent display in Plus, 7, and Frontier, so it'd be weird if he didn't get at least a nod to it in Zero. Zero particularly being his only chance to use ACTUAL SoCal instead of spacefuture replica SoCal.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    New season is go! Winter 2026's first few titles are dropping on streaming now. I have no use for My Hero Academia or its spinoff, so I chose to start my Winter 2026 with MF Ghost Season 3. Picks up right where the previous season left off, mid-race with an injured Kanata slowly losing ground due to an arm injury preventing him from shifting into 2nd gear. Not a hugely remarkable first episode, but clearly building to a big comeback. Honestly, the one thing that really stood out... My second pick for the season is Tamon's B-Side, a romcom about a typical-ish teenage girl who loves her favorite idol singer and works a part time job as a housekeeper. When a coworker falls ill, she takes over their shifts and finds she is now the housekeeper to her favorite idol singer and is stunned by the gap between his perfect stage-managed public image and the deeply insecure, chronically depressed mess he actually is.
  23. tekering
    Amazon.jp is still taking orders directly. They ship to Australia, right?
  24. troyness
    Bugger!! I missed the pre-order window at hlj.com for the Moderoid Mospeada. It's now order stop. I emailed bbts inquiring if they'd stock it as a pre-order or for sale on release date. Waiting for their reply
  25. sketchley
    Not many does not equal zero. Also, as you earlier stated, the ship was performing controlled braking manoeuvres. So that plume in the sky may not be "East to West", but plausibly any direction. Therefore, in addition to Chichijima, places like Guam and Okinawa are also plausible. However, I doubt that Shin was somewhere as far away as the coast of North America, simply because he wouldn't be able to see it due to the curvature of the Earth. Even Hawai'i is pushing it.
  26. Bolt
    Definitely looks like the bay area. I live an hour north of SF. Kind of dramatic and a bit high, but it sure invokes the bay. Could be Mount Diablo.
  27. Seto Kaiba
    The one good look we get at Shin's childhood home at the start of Macross Zero's first episode shows a house on top of a high hillside overlooking a large city directly on the coast. Given that he says he saw the ship fall to the west and we know from his bio that he's second-gen Japanese-American, we can assume that that's a western coastline. To me, that makes California seem like the most likely suspect. Honalulu faces out onto the ocean, but it faces south and east not west the way it would have to for the scene to be possible there. Not many Americans living in the Bonin islands, but Chichijima has another problem. If he saw the ship fall from there, the second sun he saw would be in the south not the west. IIRC, at the start of "Global Report", General Global attributes the failure to the booby trap compromising control of those devices.
  28. sjoebarry started following Anywhere I can find yamato vf-1 shoulder hinge replacements?
  29. sjoebarry
    https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/various/valkyrie-one-sixty-shoulder-hinger
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