Graham

Shonen Ace is usually released on the 25th or 26th of each month. I'm going to see if I can find it in the shops here tomorrow. Graham

(Also posted in the Frontier news thread) Well, I just picked up the new June 08 issues of both Hobby Japan magazine and Dengeki Hobby magazine (out today) and there is absolutely no new news on the Bandai Macross Frontier toys and models. The last time any new photos were shown was back in March at Wonder Festival & Tokyo Anime Fair. I was hoping Bandai would have a product update by now. The only Frontier news in the magazine is some info about the Frontier DVD/BR-disc and small pictures of Luca and Mikhail's battroids, of which larger pics are on the official Frontier site now anyway. Graham

Well, I just picked up the new June 08 issues of both Hobby Japan magazine and Dengeki Hobby magazine (out today) and there is absolutely no new news on the Bandai Macross Frontier toys and models. The last time any new photos were shown was back in March at Wonder Festival & Tokyo Anime Fair. I was hoping Bandai would have a product update by now. The only Frontier news in the magazine is some info about the Frontier DVD/BR-disc and small pictures of Luca and Mikhail's battroids, of which larger pics are on the official site now anyway. Graham

Not sure if Luca's RVF-25 has head lasers or not. Those things on the head look too thin and may just be specialist comms antennas. Graham

According to the new pics on the official site, Luca's RVF-25 has a standard gunpod and of course should also have the inbuilt hip/wing root beam guns. I'm wondering where the ventral Elint fin goes when in battrooid mode.

Not good sculpt = not good toy. Graham

Only a couple of days til' the new issues of Hobby Japan & Dengeki Hobby come out. Hopefully, we'll get some new progress pics and release dates for the Frontier toys. Ya' know, I was thinking today it would be great if Bandai released some Frontier gashapon toys. Not, because I really like or want gashapons, but just beacuse it would be so cool to be able to walk into a 7-11 and see Frrontier toys in their gashapon machines, instead of the same old Gundam and Eva stuff. Graham

I was immediately gonna jump on the bandwagon and say Brera Sterne must be guy, but after looking at Aegis's picture analysis, I'm not so sure any more. Graham

Are we all looking at the same toys? They look terrible IMO! Still will probably pick up one of each just for fun though. Graham

Great job as always Steve. Graham

Good screen capture Ironside. I'm going to go with the port you have circled in red as the more likely candidate for a micro-missile port, just because it does look more like what we have come to expect a traditional micro-missile port in the Macross universe to look like. Of course for the large missiles, there is the possibility that they may launch from more tradional bays mounted in the sides of the lower legs, with hinged opening doors, like on the VF-19Kai's legs. Or as I've suggested before, those two missiles may have just been a continuity screw up. Graham

Never! I tried getting into 00 a few months ago, but just couldn't. There was nothing about it I found likeable or attention grabbing. After the Macross Frontier Deculture episode aired last December (and after watching it about 20 times), I found myself wanting a mecha anime fix to get me through until April when the Frontier TV series started. So despite not liking what I'd seen of the 00 mecha or character designs in the hobby mags, I decided to give it a shot and downloaded the first 5 fansubbed episodes. After all, quite a lot of members of this forum had praised the series. I think the Deculture edition really spolied me, as 00 by comparison seemed just so average and dull. Apart from my namesake character, I didn't find any of the characters interesting. Neither did I care what happened to them next. I really disliked the mecha designs. The story didn't draw me in at all. The action scenes were really dull, with boring fight choreography IMO and the music was nothing special. I also thought the animation quality only deserved a 'poor-to-average' rating. Last Gundam show I really liked was 08th MST. Graham

I've always thought that Valks have needed some sort of melee weapon, better than a pin point barier punch for hand to hand (hand to claw?) combat. Sure seems that way. Graham

Well, if the anime follows the manga, which it has been we still at least one more homage episode to go next week. I don't see this as a bad thing myself. Graham

I'm also of the opinion that the VF-25 does have the capability to carry at least some internal ordnance. however, in episode 1 and the Deculture edition it may actually be carrying larger, what look like medium range missiles, not micro-missiles. We discussed this back in December when the Deculture edition first aired. Gilliam's VF-25 launches what appears to be a pair of medium range type missiles, not micro-missiles. See the attached screen capture which shows the first of Gilliam's missiles about to strike the red Vajra. From it's size it's definitely too large to be a micro missile. I'm also curious as to why we have not seen any of the VF-25 armed with wing-mounted missiles yet. The opening animation clearly shows 3 hard points per wing and the early trailers also showed a VF-25, carrying wing-mounted ordnance. Graham

Hmm......there's a big potential difference in meaning between:- and I think we really need a native speaker to clear this up. Graham

One of the many things that’s really impressing me about this series so far is the extremely high level of detail that they are putting not just into the mecha, but also into the backgrounds and spaceships. Some of the exterior spaceship shots in episode 3 really blew me away. Graham

Hmm........., I forget was it confirmed that the total number of discs to be released is 9? If so, it looks like it is going to be a 26 episode show as previously rumored. Graham

Interesting. I don't recall seeing that post from azrael before. Graham

I've just been searching through azrael's posts, but haven't been able to find anything so far about the VF-25 having equivalent performance to the VF-19 and VF-22. Mind you, I only searched back through 10 pages of his posts. I did however find this translation of a magazine article by MWer Cyde01: - and While I think this should still be treated as speculation, the key sentence above is: Graham

No pics in signatures. Please take it down. Graham

Err..........no we don't. While I don't want to re-ignite the whole "Armored VF-25 can/can't fly in an atmosphere" arguement, I do feel I need to say say that I personally disagree with the above quoted statement. As, as far as I know and I'm open to being corrected, there is nothing officially published or nothing shown so far in the anime to back up this statement. At the momen't about the only official hard data we have about the VF-25 are it's height, length and wingspan. Ironside, I freely admit I am arguing semantics here, but if you had written "I think the VF-25 has performance similar to the VF-19", I wouldn't be writting this post. For all we know, the VF-25 may be as much of an improvement performance-wise over the VF-19 as the VF-19 was over the VF-11. Until we get some hard stats from Kawamori, anything else is just pure fan-based supposition, nothing more, nothing less and should not be presented as fact. This is just pure conjecture on my part, but I'm going to go out on a limb and make a guess that the VF-25 with have around 30%-40% higher thrust than the VF-19 and be of a similar weight, or even slightly lighter without Super or Armored Packs, thus likely having a far higher thrust to weight ratio. Again, just pure guesswork on my part. Heck for all we know it may even have some sort of gravity control system, inertial cancelling system and other fancy new tech. Graham

I'm going to go with rail gun for the moment, or possible some sort of plasma cannon. Graham

1) Alto transfered to pilot training mid-year and so missed the SMS selection process. 2) SMS is a private military company (like Blackwater), not part of the military. Graham

Grabbed some more pics of Mikhail's VF-25 in an effort to get a better look at the head. Also, the shot of the VB-6. Heh, everytime I type a post about Mikhail, I have to consciously stop myself from typing 'Max' instead of 'Mikhail'. Graham