Shaggydog

woopsie, didn't see it was already posted. delete thread as necessary.

from Hobby Japan

Well, my Michel Messiah is great. Armor stays on, except the hip armor, which isn't the end of the world. Overall, it's a very solid and fun toy, and it looks completely badass. Then again, I'm not the type to notice incredibly minor paint issues.

Sure, Yamato will show us what they can do for Frontier. And then a few years later, they'll release a v2 that doesn't fall apart.

By new DX, I mean different VF, like VF-27 or vF-1717, not a resculpted VF-25.

Graham

I hope you're right. Awesome news if true. I'd prefer a vf-171 myself, although I suppose a vf-27 is unfortunately more likely.

I have six of them and on all, the hands don't fit properly back into the arms, the arms don't really shorten properly and plug into the legs when fully shortened (or if they do, the toy is 'under tension'), amongst other issues. The issues with fighter mode parts fitting are remarkably consistent. I've heard many similar reports from other owners. Thus, I conclude that in the design of the toy, they didn't set the dimensions and tolerances of the parts correctly.

Graham is right - the biggest problem with the Alpha is the poor design. Parts simply don't fit together right. That's a design issue, not a QC issue. On the 'QC' front, the only problem I've had with my alphas is the crumbly hands. I'm really surprised to hear these reports of stuff breaking off, I haven't had that issue. Maybe it's only with the later releases.

Yamato makes beautiful toys, and they get the details right. But I don't think they're quite the transcendent toy designers they're made out to be here. Sure, they've perfected their VF-1 toys, and that's fantastic. But Yamato has a tendency to over-complicate their transformation mechanisms, to the point where the toy isn't fun or safe to transform repeatedly. Yamato needs to learn to simplify their transformation mechanisms as much as possible, and to use more metal in places where it can help them.

I agree that they could slow down their releases. Times are tough all around.

Whoa.. the people who've hated it all along, still hate it? and are still spamming the thread? what a shocker!

IMO, the appearance of the CM's legioss is inferior to the appearance of the Toynami. I wouldn't say the problem is lack of detail - the details seem fine. I just don't like the weird nipples and the tiny heads on the CM's. Also, the CM's legioss is really lightweight, and the transformation is sort of unsatisfying - doesn't really 'lock into place' in fighter mode, if you know what I mean. The Toynami alpha has many problems also, which I've described in other posts. Overall I'd give the slight edge to the Toynami, but you could make an argument either way.

As for the tread, I haven't handled the Toynami yet, but from pictures, I prefer the appearance of the CM's. The CM's tread is wonderful to play with - very solid and satisfying. But, I'll still be grabbing a Toynami beta in addition to the CM's, because the Toynami beta looks pretty cool, and it's huge and has a lot of metal, both of which count for a lot in my book. Based on reports so far, it sounds like the Toynami beta avoided most of the flaws of their alpha. Also, it sounds like the legioss-tread hookup on the Toynami set is better than on the CM's set - it almost has to be, given that the CM's linkup was really weak.

It really seems to me that neither set blows the other one out of the water. Both have strong and weak points. In such a situation, I recommend just staring at pictures and deciding which one appeals more to your tastes. Good luck.

Yup... could never understand the appeal of the 1/48 VF-1's skinny arms and chicken hands either. :-) Looking forward to the DX Messiah!

Rock on, brother. I'm with ya.

In my admittedly limited experience, no. I bought one of the first blue Alphas and one of the heels was put on upside-down. Unfortunately this wasn't something I could fix myself (the screw hole was filled with resin glue) so the folks at Robotech.com gave me a full refund, which was nice.

I waited for the last Alpha, the Shadow. It was just as fiddly as the blue one and I never quite got it back into fighter mode perfectly. I still have it and plan on clipping it to the Shadow Beta when it comes.

I ended up with 6 Alphas, plus one blue Legioss from Aoshima, and I can say pretty comprehensively that no, the toy didn't improve during in later production runs. However, I would argue that the problem with the Alpha is more poor design than poor QC, but that's semantics.. whatever you call it, they don't fit together well in fighter mode. I had hand breakage on 2 or 3 of em, I forget. The Shadow has simpler hands and is thus probably a little more immune to hand breakage. For whatever reason, I had somewhat better luck with the Aoshima, although that runs contrary to most reports. On my Aoshima, the hands seem to be made of sterner stuff.

Nevertheless, I love the Toynami Alpha, it has the best looking robot mode available on a transforming Alpha/Legioss toy. And I think Toynami overall has a fine QC record - I bought all of the VF's and never experienced a problem, nor any problems with the Voltron. The Alpha is the sole bad spot on their record, as far as I'm concerned (but it is a doozy).

Christ. Robotech.com gets the price wrong, automatically cancels your preorder, and asks if you want to order at the new price... and this makes them the 'worst company on earth'? Get out of your little fanboy bubble, child.

Wrong.

I gave up on the revoltech line a while ago, the few that I own are fragile, unstable pieces of crap. By contrast, the Yamato GNU Mac+ valks are really sturdy, stable and fun. So I think Yamato comes out of this looking good, as they usually do when they stay away from transformation

Well hopefully by 29th some peeps could take photos of those original drawings at convention

and it said right on the page:

河森氏デザイン画展

If it is not done by SK himself why would they name it galleria showing of SK? And think of this, would an artist put on show but the advertising page is using other people's work?

As I'm hoping you're intelligent enough to realize, there is a distinction between 'done by Kawamori' and 'original drawing upon which the CGI was based'. For example, it could be a revision to the design 'done by Kawamori' AFTER the CGI was produced, or it could be an early drawing that was later revised, etc. I agree that it was made by Kawamori, and I rather suspect that it may be the drawing upon which the CGI was based, but we can't claim that definitively. I honestly don't know what would be considered the 'canonical' design in any case, and actually, I don't care. I like the chunky drawing, thank you for posting it.

Oh my. The original drawings by Kawamori are chunky? Oh my oh my.

EDIT: from perusing the original page linked to above, it doesn't say anything about this being the original drawing upon which the CGI model was based. In fact, they don't say much about the drawing at all.

Chinese toy factories have been shutting down due to the economy entering a serious recession. See, for example:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7733499.stm

It's not uncommon for toy companies to miss release dates even in the best of times, especially around the end of the year when there are a lot of new products, but this toy factory issue may also be contributing.

Ozma's Messiah was almost always wearing armor, rather than super packs, right? I seem to recall seeing the armor on him a lot.

If they're making the speakers, I'm sure we'll get an armor pack eventually..

False.

http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN952361

(Yes, many of the joints on HCMPs only bend 90 degrees, but double joints are becoming more common as the line progresses.)

I'm not considering getting speakers, myself. I think they're goofy as hell, and representative of the part of macross that I dislike the most. However, I do want a ghost. Might have been nice if it weren't an exclusive, but I hardly think it's anything to get pissy about. I'm just glad they're making one, and it won't be hard to get.

Hey, thanks for telling us we should be angry. But since you hate the toy anyways, why do you care?

I suspect the Tamashii web shop exclusives won't be hard to get, some folks will put them on ebay if nothing else. But, we shall see.

Someone should probably post the gross profits of Bandai, Yamato and Toynami for last year to give folks a sense of scale. I strongly suspect that no one important at Bandai has any idea that this bbs exists. That's one advantage that a smaller company like Yamato brings - more responsiveness to the fan base. Bandai's simply too big to care what American Macross fans think, most likely.

So, if you want to complain, post to 2chan or email Bandai. It'll still be ignored, but it's slightly more likely to be read.

Would people quit bitching about the bitching about the bitching, already? I mean, damn...

You people are freaking crazy, this thing looks awesome. I HOPE my fellow Bandai DX VF-25 fans wouldn't be so stupidly petty and immature to attack the VF-11 in retaliation. Then again, you can never overestimate stupidity on the web.

edit: Is there anyone out there besides me that thinks the YF-19 was the worst looking of the three Mac+ 1/60 valks? Don't get me wrong, I'm still happy to own it, I just think that of the three (based on these first pix of the VF-11b) the YF-19 did the worst job of capturing the 'feel' of the valk. Am I the only one?

edit2: The lineart comparison makes the difficulty faced by the VF-11b clear - look how long and narrow the nosecone is in the lineart of the fighter mode, and how short and stubby it is in the lineart of battroid mode. As others have said, this new toy seems to nail battroid mode, which will inevitably make the nose look stubby in fighter mode, and give it an overall impression of being 'chunky'. Yamato should sell some fighter-mode-only GNU toys to satisfy those who want a perfect fighter mode.