aurance

I don't think it can. I did a fairly careful frame analysis of certain scenes of Macross Frontier in HD, and it certainly looks like the intakes really do detach in the cartoon as well, and that's how it achieves its A-stance.

I've had mine for about five weeks now, and I've transformed it many many times. I consider myself a fairly meticulous person, so I am very precise with the transformations. 1) Yes, there are gaps around the forearms in fighter mode, simply because the forearms have a somewhat curved aesthetic that has to fit into a straight fuselage. The gaps are not very big, however. 2) I could never get the belly plates to come together completely. Just like you, squeezing them together unseats some other tabs. I've never been able to find a way to "fix" this; however, the gap is very small, and I've just chalked it up to complexities in engineering and number of parts, after a couple hours of poking/prodding/looking around with an LED flashlight. The perfectionist in me says that it could be even better, but as it is, with its (very) small flaws, the YF-21 is a stunning bird in all forms.

I actually had a toy of this thing when I was growing up in Korea. I believe it was a rather well-made knockoff of the 1/55 Bandai VF-1J. After I moved to the States, I acquired a Transformers Jetfire/Skyfire, which was another 1/55 Bandai. So my first two Macross toys were from other franchises. It somehow feels kinda dirty now.

I always separate it. But it does take scary amounts of force. Held up okay so far though.