MacrossJunkie

Here are pics showing how the gunpod is bowed. On one side, it's arched in the middle. Flipped on the other side, the ends are bowed upwards This results in the gunpod not pointing down the middle in fighter mode. I'll have to see if I can use a heat gun to soften it and straighten it out.

Yup, thanks! I knew that didn't sound quite right.

If the patterns were a font, the Yamato ones would be Arial and the Arcadia version is Arial Bold font and they hit the bold button to bold it even more.

If I had to voice a complaint about this Arcadia version, it's that the tampo printed patterns kinda suck. They're way too thick and chunky. It's particularly noticeable on the wings. When I was looking at it, I felt like there was just a large empty gap at the ends of the wings where it looked like maybe the tampo didn't get printed, but it really does kinda stop short proportionally compared to the Yamato. See below and compare the patterns on the wings, stabilizers and canards. The Yamato patterns were much more accurate to the OVA. Yamato on the left. Arcadia on the right. Edit: Also, the gunpod is a little warped and curves a little toward the starboard side. Is this an issue with anyone else's or is it just me?

I got mine. That was pretty fast shipping. Shipped through FedEx on Monday and got it today. No issues that I can find with it. The boosters weren't missing anything and nothing wrong with the feet. Not as big a visual upgrade going from the Yamato version as compared to Ivanov's. The colors are more or less the same or similar enough, perhaps a tad more magenta on the Arcadia version. Otherwise, the same improvements on the Arcadia Ivanov carries over to this as well as compared to the Yamato. The differences are more noticeable in battroid mode as compared to fighter mode which, imo, was already pretty good for the Yamaro version of Nora's. The wings stayed in place better and didn't sag compared to Ivanov's. More refined sculpt, finer panel lines, better arms, shoulder pauldrons can be positioned, tighter joints, seams better hidden, etc.

The inside of the thighs kind of crumbled on mine and split apart. I was able to glue the two halves together. Hopefully the plastic on the Arcadia ones hold up better.

I ordered mine off of ebay. SV-51 decals I bought it once for my Ivanov and recently another one for Nora's. I think they're pretty good.

Are the Arcadia made valks part of the MWW or just Bandai? I know stores like BBTS are also selling it, but it's at a higher price and probably a longer wait time to ship over the ocean unless there's some arrangement that allows the US stores to get them at or around the same time as the Japan release. If it's not part of the MWW, I'd think they'd have to keep some spares around to part out instead of going straight to Arcadia for extra parts like HLJ has done for me in the past, or maybe they can to go through their distributors. I have no idea really. This situation with Macross stuff being sold in US stores through official channels is pretty new so I have no idea what to expect. For the near future, I'll be ordering straight from Japanese stores unless US ones end up with better availability like for Bandai stuff, until more releases actually ship and there's more feedback.

Ah, I just looked at the pics and assumed the two pictures were of the same booster, one with the part back on. Looking at it closer now, I see that they are two separate boosters. Stuff like this is why I try to order from HLJ when I can manage to. If this happened to me, I would likely be able to ask them to send me the replacement part. Even over a year after I got Ivanov's SV-51 from them, they got me a replacement leg with the correct foot.

Thanks for that. That's such a random place to put it and bad design, imo. It really doesn't belong under "Follow Us". No wonder I couldn't find it.

Didn't that also happen with the Ivanovs as well? At least that can be remedied by gluing back on and isn't on the level of having two left feet. If that's the worst that can happen, I'll certainly take it over the myriad of other issues that could go wrong. *knock on wood*

Under Payment Method -> Default Payment, does it show this? Currency Used: JPY It does take a little while to update when you change it from USD to JPY. Regardless of what you have this set to, the site seems to show in USD anyway, but as I found out, they'll charge you in JPY if you have it set to that.

Yeah, it wasn't showing in my CC app when I looked last night. It was there when I checked this morning and it looks like they charged me in yen, fortunately. it was something like $275 and $57. Quite a price difference from what HLJ was charging in USD on their site.

My Nora was finally available in the PW. I am unsure what I actually paid though. HLJ's site says they charged me 315 something for the SV-51 and 66.50 for shipping. The emails I got say I paid ¥36,800 for the SV-51 and ¥7740 for shipping. I really hope it was actually in Yen because it's cheaper than the USD price they show.

Mine's still showing as processing, but not in my PW yet. If I click on order details, it gives my an Error 500 page.