aurance

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.