MacrossJunkie

I get that feeling when comparing the Frontier valks in fighter mode to the pre-Frontier designs. They're more or less the correct stated size and proportions seem accurate, but the cockpits and canopies of the Frontier valks just seem a lot slimmer, lower profile, and more compact, giving the impression that the scale is smaller.

Keep in mind that there is over a meter of height difference between the 25 and 27 so it would be pretty noticeable. That said if comparing the renewal 25's to the 27, the difference would be even worse due to the very slight height increase. This renewal 27 should close that gap a tiny bit but there will still be a noticeable height gap between the two just due to the valk's design alone. <wishful thinking>Battle Frontier and Battle Galaxy!</wishful thinking>

You can bet on it.

I've always been fond of the old Enigma and Minmay Guard schemes for the VF-1.

So what would it need to be considered a true renewal version? From my viewpoint, it has all the major renewal improvements (new crotch lock that allows legs to be lower, crotch angle lock, new wrist mount, articulated hands, new shoulder block joint, new head, corrected feet color, built in neck extension, shield was already fine, already had swiveling knee joints) that the VF-25's had. Much of the mold didn't need to be redone because it was already a big step up over the initial VF-25 releases. So due to that fact, the improvements may seem more incremental rather than the huge jump going from 25 v1 to v2.

Mine was shipped on Monday and only just hit New York customs now. Should be another few days before it reaches my house. I suspect mine will arrive next Monday.

The VF-27 battroid is shorter than the VF-25 so it shouldn't be as tall. It should be slightly taller than the original though. Bandai always charges a lot for the super packs and accessories. The pricing seems to be in line with their add-on gouging practices. Assuming 14,000 yen for the base item and then another 7,000 yen for the accessories/super packs. Too bad they're not selling a stand alone version of the VF-27 renewal. It will be even uglier after all the stores sell out in .000005 seconds and NY marks up the prices for being the only ones around still having stock. I'm glad they fixed the color on the feet and engine nozzles to be like the line art. The previous version was too light in color. Also, with the renewal type wrist connection, maybe it can finally support the gunpod. So it seems like this is the VF-27 renewal we've been wanting with the renewal style hip lock and crotch angling mechanic and renewal style shoulder block joint. Looks like the head is slimmed down just a tiny bit in addition to having the longer neck. It's not as wide as before. One thing that irks me is despite all the additional tampo markings, they still forgot to finish the hull red stripe that is supposed to be on the hip gun parts. >.<

The thing is that a bunch of the existing valk releases have already hit a threshold, at least in my opinion, where further improvements would likely be of minimal consequence and would be on diminishing returns overall. Some valks are just begging for a renewal like the 1/60 YF-19 and probably the 21 as well. Others like the VF-1, VF-4, VF-11, VF-19, and arguably the VF-17 are pretty much as good as you're going to get with them. Any further changes are mostly going to be making one compromise for a different one due to the anime magic involved in the designs or some "quality of life" improvements that just make things easier or work a little better but not really have a big enough impact to make people want to buy all over again. On Bandai's end, they just pretty much just need to do a VF-27 renewal and that's that. The VF-25 v2, VF-171, and YF-29 are already pretty much dead ringers for the line art and any further improvements would likely be minor stuff like how things lock together or something. I can pretty confidently say that a VF-25 v3 re-renewal wouldn't be met with as much enthusiasm as we saw going from the huge jump in quality and design from v1 to v2. So people wouldn't necessarily be buying certain valks all over again. I personally think there is enough room in the market for 1/60 and 1/72 to co-exist as long as the 1/72 tends to be in the sub $100 range. The 1/72 would see the bulk of the new releases while the 1/60 would be mostly re-issues unless they decide to make a valk not yet released in 1/60 scale. In which case, both scales could be made and they would be each hitting different target audiences with a minimal amount of overlap. I could see the 1/60 releases being web only like the VF-4G though. Licensing two scales simultaneously is a whole different issue though.

Bandai also followed suit and put theirs out at 1/60 scale as well. Having collected as much as I have, I'd have zero interest in collecting all over again at 1/72 scale. If they were to move to 1/72, I think their main market would be those just getting into collecting Macross stuff that missed out on most of the 1/60 items or people who wanted the 1/60 stuff but couldn't afford it, which I'm sure is more than just a few. I think a great many people who have already gotten quite a bit in their collection at 1/60 will end up passing. They would be essentially trading one target audience for another.

Moved out my older 19P pics from my album and replaced them with better shots. I replaced Beaker with an actual pilot figure for the shots as well. I blame the bad pics on not shooting for while and forgetting how. It just goes to show that you can still take crappy pics even with a good camera.

When you click on checkout, there's a box below the summary that says "Redeem Vouchers" and a text box where you put the code in. There must be a minimum amount because $127 wasn't enough for the code to work.

That looks fantastic. I dare say you may be better than I am at using the Tamiya kits.

Thanks! Those are terrible pics though. I have better ones posted a couple pages back Poor Kakizaki. Always the sacrifice. At least with the Tamiya weathering kits, there's little to no chance of permanent screw up. On another note, I think I'm going to redo my VF-19P pics. They just look too washed out and just terrible in general. Too much lighting and exposure time. Here's the first of them. I also added a hint of additional weathering to it using other colors. Random pics of the 171 EX just because it looks badass with the armor pack.

Paper towel and some water. It wipes right off the plastic. You can keep trying until you feel it looks right.

Personally, I use pure Future for gloss or mixed with varying amounts of Tamiya flat base depending on how flat I want the coat to be. I've gotten them from sellers on Amazon as well, but it might actually be cheaper getting it from HLJ.

I use the B kit the most. The white is just so versatile in its uses. The smoke is not bad either. I haven't had any use for the rust color yet though. I need to get another set just for the white as I'm almost out.

I just measured one of the valks that came with the Quarter using a digital caliper and I got 17.61 mm. The stated length of a VF-25 is 18.72 m. So that comes out to be like 1/1063 scale on the valkyries which ought to make them underscaled compared to the Quarter. But they're already large enough to take up pretty much the entire elevator platforms and you can see in the first intro for MF where Alto's 25 is coming up the lift that there is much more space. If the little 25's that came with the Quarter were around 1/900 scale also, they wouldn't even fit. So I think Kawamori just underguesstimated what the size of the Quarter would need to be in order to fit a VF-25 in the carrier section... or my math could be wrong somewhere.

That is a great job with the weathering, Lolicon. I love seeing people do this stuff.

I'm thinking it is likely to vary from toy to toy. The 171 EX I got had tight pins that were frustrating to try to pull out and had never come close to falling out on me during transformation, while other people's copies had the pins falling out if they looked at it funny. It's probably likely that the people reporting that it is fixed just got lucky with theirs as I had with the EX. Has anyone actually noted any physical differences in the pins or the holes between the EX and normal version?

One thing among many that I'll miss about Yamato that many, I'm sure, find to be an upside is that the Bandai releases (aside from the VB-6) just don't come with any stickers to let you further customize or just add for the markings they didn't bother to tampo print on the toy.

It's all the more amazing seeing the transformation in action.

Oh god, I thought that was a figurine. No wonder it seemed like they were able to get the stockings to look so detailed. I'm afraid to see this guy's other mutant creations.

The cellphone pic lacks focus and sharpness and doesn't capture detail very well. And just to get the amount I had required putting it very close to the subject, hence the distortion. It's also lacking in color depth, most noticeably where the color gradients appear more greenish while trying to represent the intended color. Congrats on getting a 19P. It's a beauty. Speaking of which, I think I may redo the weathering on mine. I'm not satisfied with it as I had issues getting the paint to come out of the airbrush reliably because it was drying out too fast and clogging in the airbrush. I got more thinner and may try going for a round 2 with it. Okay, so I want to give a clear answer on why I haven't accepted requests to weather other people's valks. My confidence or slight lack thereof in my work aside, there's just other issues that I don't really know how to handle. My biggest fear is if there is a QC flaw in a toy sent to me and it breaks while on my watch. What would I do? It would be hard to prove it wasn't my fault and I don't think I could afford to replace them, particularly with the prices that Yamato valks are skyrocketing to now. My own 19S apparently was flawed and crumbled on its own, but initially seemed fine out of the box. Secondly I don't know how much or what kind of rates people have been charging for this kind of thing. Even if I were to just ask for payment for cost of materials used and for return shipping, working out a way to accept payments would be a hassle since I won't ever set up a paypal account that is linked to my bank account. I've had bad experiences with paypal and won't ever use them again other than to send payments to online stores for valks through credit card for those that accept it as the only method. Paypal alternatives seem to be geared for business use rather than personal. Lastly, time can be a factor as it may be days or it may be weeks before I find the time to work on it so I can't really give a clear time frame.

Seconded... Her boobs probably weigh more than the rest of her body.

I thought the VF-17 is one of the top 3 easiest and fastest valks to transform so far. The other two being the VF-1 and VF-11. The VF-19 comes in at a very close 4th for me on ease of transformation. Edit: Mine didn't have super stiff joints though so that helped, but as far as the transformation goes and the clearance you're given to work with, I consider it to be very easy.