MacrossJunkie

I always thought the VF-27's tail just added more to the traditional "devil" look it had. With the horns on the head for the squad leader version, sort of a demonic looking face, taloned feet, the wings were sort of bat-like when folded up, and then the tail.

It's funny that they strayed from the anime's colors for Gamlin's 22S in order to have something a bit better looking, but decided to go as accurate as possible with Milia's. I too would have liked hers in a deeper red color like her 1J or DYRL Q-Rau. I did kinda get used to it after a while, but I don't have it displayed next to my max as it just looks too weird. I have it grouped/displayed with other reddish valks so it doesn't look as silly. As for those waiting for the VF-11B or C to go super cheap, I'm just not seeing it happen anytime soon, if ever. I think the best price I've seen it for was on clearance for around 11 or 12k yen, but I could be mistaken. Perhaps some remaining stock will be put on clearance again this holiday season.

Yeah, the seats are rotated upright much like the YF-19 so that the pilot is facing forward relative to the battroid (facing the floor of the cockpit with the canopy behind). There's just no room in the toy itself to accomplish that. At least not without using similar tricks as Yamato's 1/60 VF-19 toys.

Could someone that has this already post up some larger high res pics?

Strangely enough, for a person that prefers an accurate rendition of the fighter mode over battroid, this rendition doesn't bother me at all. It almost feels like that's how it would look if it were to appear in Macross Frontier and rendered as a CG model. After all, they changed a bunch of things on the VB-6 going from hand drawn line art to an actual CG model, why shouldn't this be any different? What does bother me are the large gaps between nearly all the pieces. I'm hoping it's just because it's a resin prototype and that the production toy will have those gaps tightened up. Unfortunately it feels like it may be a repeat of the VF-11 where it is priced way above what people feel it should be worth and thus will not sell well. I hope the S variant sells enough to justify the D because at this price, I can really afford to get only one, and that is the one I want. Sigh, if only the exchange rate were the same as it was when I started collecting Macross stuff. It was something like 1 dollar = 122 yen then. Those were good times. The VF-17at the amiami price of 21,800 yen would have cost only $179 and then another probably $33 for shipping.

Wow, I come back from a week long vacation and pics of the VF-17 has cropped up. I don't think it looks that bad at all considering physical limitations on a design that required a lot of anime magic in the transformation. That price hurts and makes my wallet cry. I hope they wait a while before they come out with the 17D so I can fit it into a budget. Too many Macross items releasing too close to each other.

Some screw covers would be nice. I imagine they'd cost practically nothing to include with the toy. One nice thing among many that I liked about the 1/3000 SDF-1 is that it included screw covers for virtually every visible screw hole which, to me, adds a lot to its appearance.

Thanks. That means a lot coming from someone who I think produces some great photos. Both you and Vegas have put up spectacular looking pics. I'm looking to expand my selection of lenses eventually, but it's pretty expensive between the now ~$300 macross collectibles and camera lenses. I need to pick less expensive hobbies...

Hmmm, I dunno. Are we looking at the same thing? The Fz-109 has a whole separate piece that folds up and covers the entire faceplate and just leaves the forehead showing wihch shows no more than the SV-51 would. The VF-14, at most depending on how you'd interpret the thickness of the lines where the visor is in sketch, either has the visor showing or the forehead folds down a bit to cover the visor, but the mouthpiece or whatever you call it still remains visible. The head just simply slides up into place into the front of the fuselage to form the nose. Granted, it's not a human looking face to begin with so I suppose it could look like anything at that point. I did say it was a nitpick In any case, I think the VF-5000 in some form or another, while unlikely, is still more likely to be made than a VF-14 so it is probably a moot point anyway.

Based on the drawings in the Macross Design Works book, the face plate looks entirely visible and not covered up like the FZ-109. edit: View showing underside from M3

The VF-14 would be cool to have too. My nitpicks about the design of it though are the vent flaps that don't lay flat against the chest in battroid and just kinda stick out and the face plate is visible from the bottom of the fighter like an old school transformer toy. Fighter mode is not the prettiest of designs either, but I'd still buy one or two if it were ever made.

Yep, that's more or less how I do it. I use a white light tent with a black felt-like backdrop and two desk lamps using 5500k color fluorescent bulbs. The tent diffuses the lighting and bounces it around. The downside of the tent is the inside constantly produces tiny white dust particles which gets on the subject and on the backdrop which is especially a pain to clean up due to the felt like surface of it. I just shoot at low iso and compensate with longer exposure times as needed. I could benefit from a third lamp and brighter bulbs. I'm still a photography newbie though so I'm probably not an ideal person to get any advice from. Picked up a Nikon D7000 back in June this year and have been playing with it off and on since. I think I've learned a lot just through trial and error though.

If how quickly the pre-orders keep selling out is any indication, they seem to be selling quite well already despite a number of people holding off purchases until then.

Wow... sounds like it has some form of mecha osteoporosis.

Do you have any of the other VF-25s? What areas are breaking on your 25S? Mine only has a split in the wing hinge area thus far. The 25G and RVF still seem to be holding up alright for me.

Yep. I want as many different valks as can be made. While I think the battroid mode is a little uninspiring, the fighter mode looks great. Would love to have one with a VF-X Ravens paint scheme or at least one of the other U.N. Spacy paint schemes rather than the Zolan one. It would be great if they made FAST packs for one also.

I felt that way with the full armor 25S. That blasted thing was such a huge pain in the ass when trying to transform it with the armor on. It was less frustrating to just take it all off and put it back on again after transforming it.

Even the prototype pics of the VF-19S shows a red tinted clear visor, so I wouldn't worry. The fact that the Kai's eyes were painted had to do with the swappable faceplate.

The Quarter and Monster are mostly fine because they use a lot of ratcheted joints and lack any ball joints (other than the head and hands on the Quarter). The ball joints on the DX valkyries however have loosened up for a lot of people, myself included. I'm willing to bet money that the same joints will get floppy on the upcoming renewal releases of the VF-25 as well. The upside is they tampo print most of the markings visible on the cg models in the animation which themselves don't seem to have any "no step" markings aside from the VF-171's.

A New Macross class carrier I mean. Examples being Battle 7 from Macross 7 and Battle Frontier and Battle Galaxy from Macross Frontier. Image Source: Macross Mecha Manual Edit: I meant Macross Frontier.

That's just a painted resin prototype. You can see the white areas where the blue paint has chipped off of what would have otherwise been blue plastic. Yamato always seems to have stuff propping up their resin prototypes. Definitely not a worry.

How is the YF-29 badly flawed? I'm not aware of any issues other than the joint looseness and poor paint adhesion that plagues all of Bandai's DX valkyrie releases. I suppose one other issue I have on mine is that the pink area on one of the wing mounted engines is only half painted, but that's mainly a cosmetic detail as well.

There's already a thread on the first page devoted to the VF-19S, F and P >.> But thanks for the effort anyway

I think the only Bandai release that included stickers was the VB-6 so people could choose their own nose art.

Are people really buying it for that much? It was only just released this year. Not sure why Bandai doesn't do another batch if demand is high enough that people will pay that much for one.