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Just started rewatching Frieren S1 today and only just realized that S2 already started, lol... I just knew it was scheduled for 2026 but didn't bother to know when exactly it would start. 5 eps in and I'm still amazed I'm not bored (like @Big s was... but not his cat, apparently ) seeing as I'm usually more into action-packed and fast paced shows. I thought I would be skipping a lot of stuff like I usually do during a rewatch, but I find myself digesting every bit of dialogue and replaying scenes that may have some unspoken meaning. Will start S2 when the 2nd episode airs.

It's great to see pics of these items when they were still crisp & new, especially these 1/6 PVC figures. Those that have survived today would have the clamshell at least partially yellowed, and the picture frames some shade of sand. It's a pity they didn't manage to release all they have set out to do; the Miria would be nice. Thanks for sharing.

Right now it's Friday night locally, so I hope you guys tune in over the weekend. Because I'm wrapping up the week with Leader-class Studio Series 86 Soundwave. Soundwave's giving off the same sort of vibes as Thundercracker... he's taller than the Netflix/Legacy toy, so he scales better with SS86 Megatron, and most of the greebles of the older figure are simply gone. It's most evident in his shoulders, which are smooth blue slabs, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that he does still have some details, like extra squares on his knees, a little extra details on his shins, and those circular bumps on his forearms. These are details that seem likely to have been pulled from MP-13, which in turn were likely inspired by the G1 toy. There are other improvements, though. His pelvis is shaped more like the cartoon. His backpack is bigger, but in a way that's actually closer to the Sunbow model. There's red paint around his forearms and shoulder cannon (the Legacy release had them, but I had to paint the Netflix version myself). The molded missiles in his shoulder cannon are also painted. His butt flap is a little smaller, and the backs of his forearms don't have the vestigial Siege landing struts. The insides of his forearms have flaps so they're not just hollow voids. Even his calves have traded the textured look for faux volume dial and power switch. The red paint on his shoulder cannon can also be found on his other accessory, his concussion blaster. Weirdly, this is a step back from the Siege/Netflix/Legacy version. The tip, which retracts inside for storage, is turned 90 degrees from what it should be. Now, there are definitely people on the internet madder about that than I am, but I do think it's a problem that someone should have caught before it went into production. I am looking at potentially modding it, so the tip extends and then rotates into place, but I can also see why people dropping $60 on a Leader-class toy might be hesitant to mess with it like that. Soundwave was a Leader in Legacy, too, where he came with an additional gun and a trio of tapes. Once again, Soundwave gets that Leader price point by being packaged with a trio of tapes. They're all brand new molds, but here's how they look with the older Micromaster versions. Like other tapes in the Studio Series like, they also come with add-on bits that the Micromasters didn't. While Netflix Soundwave came with Laserbeak and Ravage, and Legacy Soundwave came with Buzzsaw, Ravage, and Rumble, SS86 Soundwave comes with Laserbeak, Ravage, and Buzzsaw. I guess all of us who already bought Netflix Soundwave and SS86 Rumble and then bought Legacy Soundwave just to get Buzzsaw are kicking ourselves. Well, lets break down the new molds real quick. Buzzsaw and Laserbeak are similar to their prior versions in that the heads and necks flip out, and the feet fold down. Rather than have their boosters fold out of their butts we instead have booster packs that plug onto their backs. The main difference is in the wings. Instead of simply swinging them out from the sides, they unfold then swing back, sort of like the MP versions. Some have suggested that the shape of the wings on the Micromasters are more accurate, and I'd say that's both correct and incorrect. The wings on the Micromasters are shaped more like the G1 toys, but I think the SS86 versions have wings shaped closer to how they were drawn in the cartoon. One more joint to bend half the wing back more would have really sold it, though. The new boosters with the guns are also more cartoon accurate, but their chests aren't as open as the Micromasters, so they can't angle their necks as far forward, and since they're not Micromasters they lack the flip-out 5mm pegs that were useful for plugging them onto Siege/Earthrise/Netflix Soundwave and Megatron's forearms. My biggest gripe, though, reserved specifically for Buzzsaw, is that they didn't paint his beak. Laserbeak can kind of get away with that, but it's a glaring inaccuracy on Buzzsaw. And then there's Ravage. Ravage is an improvement over the previous mold in engineering, proportions, and cartoon accuracy, but that's like saying getting a D this quarter is better than getting an F the previous one. Like, sure, he's got a tail, and he doesn't have an undersized head and twig-thin forelimbs and paws sprouting from massive biceps and thighs, and sure, his hip rockets aren't vestigial molded details, but he's hardly got a lithe, catlike body, especially with those massive hinges in his neck. Poor Ravage got the mumps! There's also the Brazilian butt lift to add a 5mm peg to his tail part, and the fact that his paws still aren't the right color. I don't think we're here for the tapes, though, so back to Soundwave. His head seems to be on a ball joint, with a little up/down tilt and swivel but no sideways tilt. His shoulders can swivel and move laterally over 90 degrees. Due to his transformation, his shoulders are designed to breakaway from his torso so they can fold back, giving him a backwards butterfly joint, but there's another hinge in there that gives him a forward butterfly joint that nothing to do with his transformation. It seems to exist just so he can better reach the "buttons" on his pelvis. Moving on, his biceps swivel, his elbows bend 90 degrees, his wrists swivel, and his fingers (which are all molded together as one part) are hinged so he can open his hands. His waist swivels, and his hip skirts move so that his hips can go just a little short of 90 degrees forward and backward and just a little over 90 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. His feet can tilt up 90 degrees, but nothing really downward. His ankles also can swivel and pivot 90 degrees. Soundwave can hold his gun in either hand, and his missile launcher plugs into a port to the right of his head. If you don't want Soundwave to hold his gun, you can collapse the tip and plug it into a 5mm port on either side of his backpack. Of course, pressing the button to the left of Soundwave's head will open the door on his chest. His new tapes fit inside, as do the older Micromaster ones. I know some have lamented that he can't accommodate the G1 or MP tapes, but this approach makes more sense, I feel. For one, there's the matter of proportions. Soundwave's G1 toy has a much larger torso proportionally, and it's why MP-13 wound up using the same size tapes. For two, we've already had so many tapes released in the mainlines, both as Siege/Earthrise/Legacy Micromasters as well as SS86 releases. It's far more important for SS86 Soundwave to be compatible with those. Speaking of compatibility, you might notice that there are tabs on the outsides of Soundwave's arms near his elbows. These tabs aren't for alt mode. As near as I can tell, it's for the condors. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw both have little notches in their feet that seem designed to fit over the tabs on Soundwave's arms, allowing them to perch there. I say "seems," though, because the fit is not particularly tight and only marginally better than just balancing them on his arm in the first place. One more thing to note about the tapes... the booster packs for condors and the tail & rockets for Ravage both have 5mm pegs on them. They can be swiveled (or the rockets can swivel around them, as it were), so Soundwave can technically use them as weapons on his own. Soundwave's transformation is a lot like the Netflix/Legacy toy. Remove his gun and shoulder cannon. Open the flaps on the sides of his backpack, then pull the backpack (along with the head) back, then tuck the head in and close the backpack. Plug his weapons into the ports along either side of his backpack, then fold the backpack flaps over so they tab onto the weapons. Swivel his waist 180 degrees, open his forearms and fold the fists in, close his forearms, then fold his entire arms back alongside his weapons. Open a pair of flaps on the backs of both legs, swivel his feet 180 degrees, then fold the feet up into his legs. Fold out the flaps on his heels, then close the larger of the two flaps you opened on the backs of his legs. Leave the other flap open. Lift his butt flap, and swivel his thighs 90 degrees. Move his hips outward 90 degrees, and bend his knees so the backs of his legs plug into the sides of his torso where his arms were. Speaking of arms, they'll actually tab onto the legs at the shoulder and near the wrist. Open the two flaps from the inside of the butt flap, then fold it down to fill in the rest of the front. Finish it off by pushing his knee vents in so the sides of the alt mode are flat. SS86 Soundwave improves on a lot of the issues I had with the Netflix/Legacy version without totally fixing them, so they're mostly still there. Like, his arms and backpack don't fill out all the space on the back of Soundwave's alt mode, so there's still gaps, especially between his arms and under the backpack. But, his backpack at least tries to hide the stored weapons better. I think a big complaint is that his legs fold the same way as the Netflix/Legacy toy, which is to say backward, so the shins form the sides of the tape deck instead of the backs of his legs. Thing is, I kind of get why they went this route. The sides of the tape deck are silver, like (most of) his shins. The backs of his legs are blue, for cartoon accuracy, which would make the sides of the tape deck blue, which isn't cartoon accurate. There's also the matter of the waist swivel, and the fact that his pelvis buttons are not the tape deck buttons. This turns his legs around, so the fronts of the tape deck would have to be the outsides of his legs instead of the insides. Again, this doesn't work for cartoon accuracy, where the outsides of Soundwave's legs are blue and have bump outs while the insides are silver. I don't think they absolutely had to do it this way; MP-13, after all, uses his actual pelvis on the front of the tape deck, but I can see how trying to do it on a Leader-class budget, a good portion of which went to the tapes, may have been difficult. In any case, tucking the feet in and using flaps on the heels to seal the gaps, lining up the legs with the chest better, pushing the knee vents in, and tucking the butt flap in flush with the legs does at least make SS86 flatter, smoother, and tighter. Again, improvements all around, even if only minor. Except for one thing that is not improved. That's the color on the bottom front of the tape deck. On SS86 Soundwave it's just blue, straight across the bottom. I thought this looked odd to me, because the Netflix/Legacy toy has silver, the G1 toy has silver, and MP-13 has silver. To make sure it wasn't a toy thing I looked at his Sunbow control art, and it's silver across the bottom. Thinking it might be a case of sometimes silver but sometimes not, like the stripe on Prime's cab, I even watched a bit of the '86 movie. And when Soundwave transforms to play back Laserbeak's recording for Megatron, sure enough, silver on the bottom. Well that's unfortunate. Now I feel like I'll have to buy some future store-exclusive or premium Takara version if I want an accurate alt mode deco. Or, as you guys were cynically suggesting with Thundercracker, wait a few years for Hasbro to run through their popular G1 characters and start over yet again on new molds that are even more slightly (but never perfectly) accurate. Anyway... not a ton Soundwave can do as an immobile box. His tape deck door still opens, and you can still insert and remove his tape minions. There's a pair of 5mm ports on the back of the tape deck that I found I could use to plug in the condors' backpacks or Ravage's tail... except that's two ports for three tapes. Make's the empty space under the backpack seem a bit wasted... one more 5mm port on the underside of the backpack could have really been useful. In a lot of ways, Soundwave is a lot like Thundercracker. Thundercracker has a lot of little improvements due to being a brand new mold instead of an enlarged and improved version of the Classics Seeker mold, but still isn't perfect, and was hardly as groundbreaking as SS86 Megatron or Optimus. Soundwave has a lot of little improvements due to being a brand new mold instead of being retooled from his Siege toy, but still isn't perfect, and is hardly as groundbreaking as SS86 Megatron or Optimus. He comes with Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, and Ravage who are all improved a little from their Micromaster versions, but still aren't perfect (especially Ravage). But, just like Thundercracker, those little improvements are meaningful enough that I can overlook the imperfections and still feel it was worth upgrading. He gets the recommend from me. But I totally understand if you're good with what you already have.

Halfway through the 2nd episode. I guess the show is okay, but I find many of the characters to be annoying. I don't know if they're all bad actors are they just gave them bad characters. Holly Hunter, I know is an award-winning actress, but I can't stand her quirky character. Holly Hunter is one of those god awful I refuse to wear shoes in public people. Many of these characters share the same traits: quirky, awkward and annoying. I'm fine with such characters when there's only one of them by series. Dialog is way too modern. In less than 10 years this show will be more dated than the original series because of this. I still think the production design looks cheap and figured out the reason they've got CGI droids and aliens in the background. I rather they used the money for more physical sets. One of the main cadets is a blue skinned fish-face alien. His makeup is all CGI, but I guess they don't have the budget to CGI his face all the time, so the Cadet wears a human face hologram? The logic of this show offends me. In the 2nd episode a cadet is hauled to his seat at very important diplomatic meeting by security. The cadet's uniform is covered in space snot. How dumb is security? Bringing in a cadet covered in snot isn't a good impression. This is especially stupid when we see them changing cadet's clothes through some sort of a transporter dressing room. Why didn't security stop off there first? I think this show is trying too hard to connect with the Zoomers. Is that what the current generation is called? I'm no Zoomers but even they should be offended by such pandering. This show has potential and isn't that bad, but I feel it needs a course correction to focus on what works and everybody being the quirky character is not it.

Eh... now, I'm pretty sure Star Wars did a pretty decent trade for a decade and a half with no new films coming out because they had comic books and novels and such building up the setting and doing their own thing. In fact, isn't that that material got tossed one of the things the fans were upset about when the franchise changed hands? Not enough of a problem to stop the movies from making serious bank. 🤔 They may be bland, uninteresting, forgettable, or even downright cringeworthy at times... but they still put buns in seats in epic numbers at least temporarily. Filoni's the man behind Star Wars's forgettable franchise slop on Disney+. Almost every series there is based on his work from The Clone Wars directly or indirectly. Genuine, utterly unambiguous flops like The Acolyte have his fingerprints all over them.

So... wading into this with my expectations as low as possible. The new 60th anniversary eyecatch is nice. I have to wonder why the Cerritos and Protostar didn't make the cut, though. The tech here looks... like... honestly the prison transport looks like it belongs to Archer's era, more than a millennium ago. We finally get to the opening credits after 14 minutes of agonizing generic slop... and the title card looks like it was thrown together in 20 minutes using GenAI assets. Honestly, like everything else about 32nd century NuTrek, Starfleet Academy seems to be built around a plot hole. Namely, the idea that reopening the Starfleet Academy campus on Earth is in any way significant. It's the oldest campus, sure. But it's far from the only one. There were EIGHTY campuses in 2401 and that number almost certainly went up not down. There is zero reason for Vance to be recalling an officer who has been out of the service for 15 years and doesn't want to be there to run the reopened San Francisco campus. There's no real reason to reopen the San Francisco campus at all other than creator provincialism. But we have to have a protagonist who's playing the martyr, having resigned in "disgrace" over having made a child a ward of the state after his mother was sentenced to a penal colony for piracy and murder (which is incredibly stupid) and Admiral Vance has to kiss her ass to get things rolling. Also, what is the Discovery-era's fetish with making every protagonist an ex-convict? OK, no... I can't take this seriously anymore. The acting here is absolutely terrible, and the writing might be worse. I am twenty minutes in and I am ready to stop. It's not Section 31 bad, but it's getting there. Robert Picardo delivers a pretty typical performance as Voyager's EMH. It's a shame he's wasting his time here. Because Discovery got made fun of for not bothering to name the bridge crew, Starfleet Academy takes the time to have the Captain personally name every bridge officer on taking command so we know that the writers weren't that lazy again. I have a nasty, nasty feeling that Kerrice Brooks is going to get a lot of hate for her character. Like Mary Wiseman, she seems to be stuck playing a character who is what can only be described as Hollywood Autistic. It's overacted in a way that makes her feel less autistic and more developmentally delayed? Even the Doctor ends up actually fleeing from her due to how obnoxious she is. Yes, the doctor really doesn't know what the word "casualties" means now. "Do not kill your instructor on day one". Words to live by. That's got to be at least second semester curriculum. Also, medical technology seems to have taken a massive step backwards with tissue regenerators now being incredibly painful for some reason? The fight scene at the end has enough shakycam to make you think the lead cinematographer was Michael J. Fox. Oh no, the first episode is bad. It's worryingly bad. "We have learned NOTHING from the failure of Star Trek: Discovery or Section 31" bad. Based on my own experience, I doubt it's culture war BS driving the generous helping of negative reviews. The writing is atrociously, cringe-inducingly bad. If they could fix that it might actually be watchable, but as it is it doesn't matter how good (or bad, in the case of Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti) the actors are if they're delivering dialog and following storylines that read like someone asked ChatGPT to write Star Trek in the style of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The series can't decide if it wants to be serious or funny, and it REALLY needs to pick a lane because it can't do both.

I haven't watched Academy yet but I keep seeing negative headlines pop up on my social media feeds. Is the show generally bad or is it one of those, "its bad because of it's woke agenda?"

Watched both episodes. 1 was a set up episode. Almost gave up since the first 1/3 was ...not Star Trek-ky more generic space sci-fi but ploughed on through to give it a chance. Main student characters are .... hey it's high school in space/san franciso! 2 had cameos from multiple shows. Time to rebuild the Federation with hot girl Betazed.

Nice! My tracking is showing mine at the central postage warehouse to be delivered either Monday or Tuesday.

Sounds like what I was expecting... I did watch the first 15 minutes or so of that Section 31 dreck - I'm not even going to bother watching that much of a new Trek show without some good recommendations and that ought to scare the powers that be at Paramount (not me personally, but that so many former Trekkies like myself will no longer make it a point to watch new Trek).

Star Wars Merchandising is based off the movies being popular. All of that will dry up if the movies don't start making big profits again. I am NOT one of those culture war crybabies. But the new trilogy characters are all completely forgettable. That is a problem. Last I checked Dave had nothing to do with the movies (except perhaps that Clone Wars animated mess that started the whole thing off). The movies are where things went off the rails.

"More fun than Discovery"? So are: - root canals - kidney stones - endometriosis - 1,001 papercuts on your hands in a vinegar factory - AI video "Carbon Disco" (Star Trek) - A night time aircraft carrier landing in a storm at sea in 1964 flying an F-4 Phantom II - accidentally sitting on a cattle prod and triggering the device - listening to Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz as he recites bad poetry for nine hours straight

I was just about to start when I saw this post. One of my friends watched it earlier, and could only manage damning it by faint praise as "more fun than Discovery". EDIT: The initial batch of reviews and review scores are NOT promising. This sucker's sitting at a 35% audience score. That's enough to put it in Trek's bottom 10 titles right off the bat.

That hasn't really been the case for a long time. Star Wars is a merchandising empire that goes far, far beyond the movies. That's what made George Lucas a billionaire. If anything, it would be more accurate to say the movies and TV shows are a way to milk more money out of merchandising because they're launchpads for toys, for games, for novels, for comics, and all manner of other goods. Does the studio's president deserve some of the blame when the work her subordinates do doesn't produce the intended result? Yes, absolutely. Most of it belongs to the project's creative team who dropped the ball. But that's not what Star Wars's crybaby culture warriors are complaining about. In their desperate delusion, they imagine her to be chiefly if not solely responsible for every single thing they don't like about the franchise (which is ridiculous) and conveniently overlook that those projects were still financially successful and that she presided over a number of extremely well-regarded Star Wars projects like The Mandalorian, Rogue One and Andor as well. The hilarious irony is her anointed successor has a far better claim to being responsible for what ails Star Wars than she ever will. 😆

That was half a decade or so ago

So, has anyone watched this yet (and will admit to having done so)? I'm not inclined to watch it but if someone here says it was great I'll give it a look. Not saying it is bad, but 90210 was all the rage and I had no interest in it. Same for Survivor or America's Got Talent (when everyone at work was shocked I'd never seen it and to this day I never have)

Have to agree. She's been president there long enough, and seeing one movie go bomb, and then another, and not change anything in response? She deserves her share.

I believe my Optimus Prime did. I'd have to fish box contents out to be certain.

Yes. noticed that lots of toy/model companies do that not just in Japan, When Yamato introduced their V.O.T.O.M.'s line they first released the basic version then a month later the RSC version and another month later the RSC with pilot though Toys R Us, then again later the side armaments as an add on pack. Kind of glad that Bandai did a complete RSC with the parts to convert it to a regular Scopedog right from the beginning and only later the basic Scopedog, At least the 1/35 wave kits aren't ultra expensive... Unlike the Hi-Metal R Kumman arc...

Going to disagree. Star Wars IS the movies. The other stuff was a way to milk money out of the movies. The president of the studio very much deserves the blame when the product does so poorly (at the end) that the studio has to stop producing movies completely for years. Does she get the blame for any particular thing that went wrong, no, but any president of a company that had a product mishandled so badly gets the blame for who they kept in charge during that time frame.

I'm about ready to mark all AI trailers as spam. It is bad enough that people have to post every single official image for every single movie. Here's the same official image was already posted here last week but here it is again with a different font. The same images repackaged is not new information. AI trailers are even worst. They are garbage that no-talent thieves spam on YouTube to steal views from actual official creators and actual fan creators.

@tekering That blue!!!! This is going to look amazing bookending that previous build. Love it.

🤞Gambit has been waiting for his lady love for quite a while

Pre-ordered Max yesterday also from BBTS. I’d kick myself if I didn’t pick one up, as I only have the blue -1J from the Hi-metal line.

Finally got my Miriya Veritech today.