Million Star

(of which I also have the collector's edition with the storyboard and lineart collection).

I have that one too. The amount of previously unseen detail you can see in the remaster is incredible but the black is horribly grainy, according to a lot on MW that could have been fixed too if the remaster team knew what they were doing? I still go back to my fx copy just because of the blacks. Anyway the HD remaster set is worth it just for the extras alone imo, repro Skylark giveaways? Compiled Saturn animation?! Coooool!

nice, I remember I was in Tokyo when that came out and I think there were two versions, collectors that you have and standard? I didnt even have a DVD player back then..

Roy Strike 1S - any scale or maker. In fighter mode its just the epitomy of Macross to me. Completely bad ass war machine, looks so f`n cool from any angle.

Ah just checked Australian Customs and its true the duty free limit for imports has been increased from AUD$250 to AUD$1000 as of October 2005 . So AmiAmi all the way. Too bad I cant really afford this, having no job and all, oh well, theres always deadstock or the used market in a year or two.

Why no interest in collecting anymore? Don`t you think you might regret selling later?

Will HLJ mark it as a gift/low value? Might make it cheaper than through AmiAmi? Although I heard Australian customs only bothers to charge duty on items over $1000 these days? Any Aussies know if that is true?

I never knew the Gnerl was equpped with an air freshener button!

very nice. Now you can start adding 1/5000 characters, christmas cakes, posters, sempai helmets, tax returns and spare change etc to really bring the city to life. Good luck.

I wonder how it ended up there? Theres no collector that would donate it. Maybe a wife or mother donated it `on behalf` of a the collector? Or my personal favorite story: maybe a rich Japanese or HK family moved out to Australia in the `80s, their kids had so many toys that there were too many to play with and some weren`t even opened. This year since the kids have moved out the grandmother had a clean out and donated it and the other things you picked up to the store.

On price - remember there are stores that routinely give 15% to 20% discount to Yamato products, e.g. HobbySearch, AmiAmi and anime-export, which is significant for the high base price. 19% off at AmiAmi will bring it down to US$320 before shipping. Japanese government have been trying to keep yen from rising so who knows what will happen in 3 months. I am just glad it is not another web-shop limited.

Historically many Yamato big items go into deep discount after a year or two at HLJ and a few other places. The Votoms and Garlands were going for >50% off, the Patlabors are at 40-50% off. All Sv-51 reached 50% off and the Nora still has 60% off at HLJ. However I doubt this SDF-1 will get deeply discounted unless it turned out to be broken like the Garlands, but with a proven 1:2000 prototype it shouldn't happen. Also this SDF-1 will be the only painted SDF-1 in the market for a long while, unlike the Votoms and Patlabors.

Shipping cost shouldn't be too bad. This SOC GX-46 is closest in volume and in length, so a EMS cost of 6000yen is probable for US/Canada shipping. The box is not crazy big - it's smaller than some Perfect Grade models.

On variant - I would expect a web-limited weathering version later, and may be a heavy battle damage version like at the end of the movie. TV version is tricky since there are significant difference between the DYRL and TV SDF-1, and Yamato know their customers will not drop another 30k+ yen if they simply repaint it and replace the ARMDs.

very sensible post.

This is really neat.

It doesn`t look too large to be 1/60 at all imo. Regults consistantly tower over valkyries in the TV series. In the movie they are only seen in outer space combat so its harder to judge the size difference but in the TV series its clear in the majority of ground combat scenes that regults are much larger than valkyries.

nice pick up! I think I`ll go check out my local Vinnies and Salvos tomorrow...

So this is 100% confirmed to be a completed and painted toy right? If so I`m in, will look bad ass on my desk with the rest of my small DYRL collection.

yeah I would be. What part of Australia are you in? I`m in Canberra.

hahaha

Thats very cool man, it reminds me of playing Dino Wars! where the emphasis is on fun rather than scale or realism.

still it would be epic to see this game at a much smaller scale with complete Zent invading forces vs complete UN Spacy garrison.

I know I'm too late on this, but I just got back from the con and heard some from my staff friend (who tried hard not to name her, but I knew anyway ). I saw the posts before heading up too, though I'm sure she deleted some as it didn't sound that bad (a lot of self-depreciating stuff). So I hadn't heard about the airport thing, which is messed up if true. There's two sides to the coin, and I hear that she wasn't exactly gracious under fire either . For the sound problems, she apparently was very unwilling to work with the staff on anything and was swearing up a storm (apparently even telling the crowd that "You've probably heard that I've been Bitching") . So essentially they both had issues with one another. None of this being very unusual for her or cons. No one's perfect and it sounds like both sides were being a bit unprofessional. I love Mari, and I know my friend has had bad run ins with her in the past, so maybe he's a touch jaded, so I take it with a grain of salt, but don't just rag on the con, especially if you weren't there and are just going on her rants. I know SacAnime ain't the best, but few are. I'm sure there's truth in both sides of the story, but I know I sure as hell haven't heard all of it . I wish I'd caught the Saturday concert (not like I enjoyed the run up the state that replaced it anyway) to see it first hand myself. I hate hearing about my friends fighting with an artist I appreciate, no matter who starts it.

Still it sounds like she patched things up by the concert, so it's s'alright. Probably a mix of the usual con shakes and hiccups.

She was still rather nice on Sunday, and didn't seem too terribly disappointed at the Macross stuff she was signing. She participated in the Q&A well enough. She even seemed quite excited to learn that Minmay has a bunny like creature in The First. That said, it was fairly obvious she wasn't entirely enjoying all her time there and it makes me wonder why she bothers with cons if she doesn't really enjoy them. I'm sorry if it is the case. It was quite off and on, but I suppose it was understandable. She even knocked herself to another friend when discussing AX. He told her the surprise guest was Yoko Kanno, and she commented that, "everyone would rather see Yoko than her anyway" when we said we were hoping it was her at the time. Shame she thinks that way.

Did anyone here actually catch the concert? Personally, I was just glad that I got to see her again, get my items signed (once again, just about everything Minmay related has her name attached ), and that she still remembers me.

Interesting post, I was hesitant to write anything negative about Mari Iijima myself due to her being worshipped here. I have to say I can believe there are two sides to the story of the con, because after reading Mari Iijima`s facebook for the last 6 months she does come off often as over senstive and a little prima-donna ish, and really a little too sensitive about being typecast as Minmay. I love her music and voice (Macross and non), have most of her albums but as a person, I`m not sure I would want to hang out with her. But thats 99% of famous people.

and I guess she does cons for the money, she even offered Japanese lessons on mariimusic.com at one point (still does?), after all, like athletes, singers generally only have a limited time at being marketable and they have to make as much money as possible during that time. I know I`ll contribue to her retirement fund by continuing to only buy her material through marimusic.com. starting with the Lorna Doone reissue next! whoo hoo!

Wow, I would be in tears getting rid of a collection like this. Can anyone fill me in on why Hikaru rather than Roy is pictured on the Fokker 1S box?

well the sacanime `staff` are just volounteers so they can`t be out of a job. I`m sure that if they had jobs they would lose them over this in America. Actually in Japan it is VERY hard to lose your job for incompetence. If companies REALLY want to get rid of someone (rare) they will just bully the person until they resign. I`ve seen it happen multiple times.

okay, I guess in the long term (or in this mod`s case the REALLY long term) its better to work up to the Spacy slowly.

So just Meltran vs Zentran for now? No UN Spacy?

I wonder if somewhere out there theres an Earth 2 convention held?

Medialink is a third party software you can get for $20. It will basically allow the PS3 to read everything on your computer wirelessly. And if it can be played on your laptop using codecs or as i use VLC, it will play seemlessly on the PS3. I haven't convereted any MKVs or OGMs yet they play well on my PS3, the only real issues is that you may need to limit your computer use while streaming so not to interrupt the wireless signal.

okay, yeah thanks.

haha, I bought those BGC tapes back in the day in Australia for AUD$70 a pop. Besides Gunbuster they were the only commercially subbed anime I could find until I got a multi system deck.

Thankyou for the upload, I think I have this on the back of an old fansub somewhere but no VHS machine these days.