NeoverseOmega

Is it wrong that I read all these pages of interesting discussion on possible economic impact, military functionality, in series historical examples and comparative tactics and find myself thinking: it's because Kamawori loves aircraft - if he had a fetish for tanks, Macross would be full of variable ground units . . . .

Actually I love the invader too - but because it's unique and it's "fugliness" actually strikes me as strangely believable and even kind of intimidating. The beautifully minimalistic elegance of the VF-1 and similarly inspired designs is hard to beat, but in some ways has been beaten into the ground for me. I can't see them like I used to because there have been so many imitations and iterations. This Drakken based design excites me more than anything has since the plus/7 era - I suspect a very Zentran battroid which I look forward too!

Definitely - I think the 1/100 already does so much right if they scaled that basic design up to 1/60 and added integrated heat shield, landing gear, transforming side covers (as shown above) and the mechanical detail for the inner transformation parts they had on the model kit, it would be enough of an upgrade to make people snap it up. I'm debating about the anime accurate leg transformation though - it looks cool, but for it to be more solid than that floppy model it needs to be metal. In theory getting rid of that swing bar in the back can allow them to bring the chest and back closer together getting rid of some of the gappiness behind the head and allowing the side-covers to fit, but if it makes keeping the legs clipped on in either mode less stable it might not be worth it. As far as the 1/100 scale . . . . I've always considered myself a perfect transformation kind of guy, but in this case I can live with a tweaked version of the current 1/100 for two major reasons. For one, I do think it already has some advantages over the Arcadia in design and proportions (particularly in battroid mode), and secondly,if they can keep the price point under 90 dollars, I can actually get a full collection. As it stands, I can buy at best one valkyrie a year, and if anything goes wrong (furnace goes out, moving, etc.) that's not even an option - now that the Arcadia releases are largely over three hundred, as much as I love them I've been largely priced out of the market. I scrimped and saved for a VF-4 (which if you've seen me on that thread you know was my dream valk), I was forced to move and the money I saved ended up having to be put into the security deposit. Similarly the money saved for the Arcadia VF-19 went out with my furnace. Up to this point, my goal has simply been one of each - one vf-1, one VF-19, etc. At this price range I could buy the entire Vermillion squadron for less than that one VF-0D and possibly still give them an enemy mecha to pose with without feeling like I'm destroying my budget. If anything, I would change the 1S head and skull placement, tweak the nosecone and cockpit (I suspect kamawori is thinking of making the nosecone removeable so that the GBP armor doesn't have the extended crotch 1/48th yamato had) and touch up the foot joint mechanism because it can be a tad floppy. While I'd love to see an integrated heatshield, if it takes it over 90 bucks I can live without it. Overall even if they left the design alone at a low enough price point, I'd snatch these up (heh, I can paint over that awful skull and steal a decal) - knowing that improvements are being made gives me cautious hope.

Hahaha - Kevin is getting lots of excellent free advice waaaaaay too late. . . . . trust your "enemies" (which is kind of sad that we Macross fans get that label - in some cases we're more allied than they realize) to know your strengths better than you do. A think tank here could certainly get the franchise on track - I'd like to think it's because we're mostly intelligent people who love the subject matter, but lets face it, what has been done sucks SOOO bad they could probably use a ouija board and a sacrifice of KFC to a deity named Krouton and still do a better job. Heh, I'd work for peanuts compared to what they're spending now - despite two degrees and a minor in graphic design I'm just breaking 20 thousand a year. Heh, I do have enough customer service experience to know that the term is something they really don't understand.

Heh - there were times when I did more Palladium RT gaming than actual assignments when I was at University. I miss those days sometimes. . . . Welcome Sleepy042! Don't let the banter throw you off - we MW's give each other grief sometimes for loving one thing or another (be it Macross 7, Macross II, Robotech, or Southern Cross) but when it all comes down to it, we're all fans and we're all different, and that's part of what makes hanging out here fun and enlightening! We're one fun, exciting, thoroughly dysfunctional family! The tongue in cheek abuse is part of the affection, er, at least most of the time. . . . Heads definitely need to roll at HG. They need to define for themselves what they want Robotech to be in the simplest and most practical sense - is it purely a nostalgia based property? Is it something that can possibly reclassify itself as "retro" and use its eighties quirks to make itself self aware and cool? Is it willing to piss off the old fans and reboot itself to capture a new generation? The sad thing is in good hands with a more skilled and less egotistical creative staff, any one of those is a possibility - but finding highly skilled and creative people who would be willing to work on Robotech now is going to be a hard road. The sad truth is, even in its heyday, Robotech bordered on being a nonentity - it was the almost ran against Voltron and Transformers that a few people really latched on to because of its visual expressiveness, emotional content, and verisimilitudinous mechanical design - three things that none of the derivative works seem to understand in more than the crudest respects. I don't think HG fully understood what it had even when it really had it . . . . . Without the stain of the HG we have come to know and loathe - the ridiculously ligitous, arrogant, lazy and emotionally manipulative, outright parasitical company it appears to be - I'm sure there are a lot of creative people who could be given this particular challenge and would say: "cool, this could be fun"! Cut the heads, and go about mending a LOT of fences, and then maybe they can do something with the property. Take Transformers for example - if HG had been willing to work with Hasbro on an anime accurate Jetfire along with a "VF-1S" repaint instead of suing them over a repainted G.I. Joe toy, imagine the money that could be made on toys for BOTH franchises (and the quality jump over Toynami). Imagine if they said to FASA, "Hey, there was some crazy legal stuff happening in the eighties and we both ended up with the same designs - that's all just silly history. Would you like to use the Unseen? We can sell a license for whatever we want to, just throw a little fiction in there to reference us - say some battlemech designs were pulled out of transmission coming out of a wormhole or something, put a little link to us and the Robotech universe on your page, and a little footnote in your gaming books when you use them and we're all good". Don't you think at least a few Battletech fans would get behind them if HG decided to produce destroid toys? Even without the legal issues of Tatsunoko and Big West, if they really understood their market and were willing to treat all the interconnected fans of the original designs with respect, they could have made a lot of money over the years. RT could be, if not thriving, getting by comfortably if they simply had a different attitude about their property. Now they need to do a lot of kowtowing. Foreheads to the floor. Possibly until bleeding or borderline unconscious. Then Robotech might have a chance to really be as good as some people think it once was.

Sorry - just couldn't resist. Yeah, I would totally LOVE to see a flashback 2012 version, or a Max/Myria release.

I spoke to a number of engineers about this same issue over the years - their responses were pretty much the same as what people have been saying above. What it comes down to is that even if you had the technology to handle all the physical issues of a transformable plane, it would ultimately not be as good a plane as one that uses all the same technology WITHOUT the robot parts - nor would it be as good a robot as one that doesn't have to be ultralight and fit a bunch of jet kibble in order to fly (and keep in mind that a robot would be fragile and poorly armed compared to a tank of the same mass) In short it would be pathetic military hardware in both modes and vulnerable during transformation - just a big, expensive, difficult to maintain target that would probably blow up nicely. That and stealth technology is dependent on shape - even a stuck landing gear bay makes a stealth jet visible to radar, imagine what something like transforming would do . . . . yep, this thing would be a nice explosion within seconds. Just the other day I brought it up with a gentleman who works at Boeing - his response was that if someone could design a plane so cheap and easy to fly that a rich eccentric could buy them for his well trained dogs, hundreds of companies would happily fund it - and with the AI that exists in both cars and drone fighters that isn't all that unlikely. If you designed a plane that transformed into a robot, you'd have a useless hunk of cool that would only interest people at a monster truck rally - it would be a total waste of engineering and resources. It might happen in the RC world someday just for kicks (transformable RC cars have existed for years and there are a few that actually turn into pretty sophisticated robots), but its actually much more *useful* to have dogs flying a plane than having a transformable one - much less something as complex as a valkyrie (maybe, at best, a drone with a single mechanical arm and unusually large landing gear is about as far as that kind of design could ever be remotely practical). Sorry - your friend is right. Flying dogs are nowhere near as absurd as a Valkyrie, no matter how much we might love them.

Boobs and random robots? That sounds like my hard drive.

That's funny, if this were a transformer I'd say, hmmm, nice homage to to the VF-4, VF-1, and Legioss, and it would make a decent deluxe. Being as this is supposed to be tied to those ACTUAL units, um, it doesn't work so well. Sadly, its about what I'd expect - most attempts at original Robotech designs I've seen seriously looked like they just cut up the Legioss and Valkyrie and made a franken-fighter out of them. The basic transformation scheme looks workable, its the aesthetic choices that bug me the most (bulbous legs, inelegant joint covers, the attempt to force it to resemble the VF-1 and Alpha). Both the Legioss and the VF series achieved a unity of design between the three modes, the lines of the robot very much resembled the lines of the fighter and the parts were integrated. This looks a bit more like robot parts pulled out of a jet, and the parts don't fit together terribly well. At the same time, if they actually practiced and floated around more ideas they could improve considerably - even Kamawori's "breast fighters" looked a little cheesy even if they were mechanically pretty impressive. The problem seems to be that (historically speaking anyway) Robotech related designers neither pay attention to criticism nor make enough assays at mechanical design to really get better. Just rehashing what has already been done or touching it up with a few different colors and weapon systems doesn't help you deal with the problem of how to get the lines and forms from the fighter to match up with the lines and forms of the robot. Being that they probably don't have aerospace or engineering backgrounds, a transformer like design is really not surprising- it's just disappointing when the mechanical designs that went together to make Robotech were, at least in my opinion as a child, ANTI transformer designs. (Yes, I was one of those poor children that grew up on Robotech and didn't know anything about the source material until college, so I have this weird love/hate relationship with the series). Nonetheless, if they actually kept at it, sought out criticism from people who have a knack or interest in these things, they could improve quite a bit. Concentrated effort towards figuring out what it would take to refresh the series would go a long way if there were anyone even remotely interested in listening. Heh, granted we all know better, but I still like to imagine sometimes. It's that love/hate thing. Either way, I am glad to see them at least try to create something instead of simply knocking off other peoples work (even if none of them designed that fighter!) Granted, considering the progression of technology in robotech, in-between generations would almost HAVE to be bizarre mishmashes . . . . if they redesigned everything from the beginning and followed a progression of improvement from that it could work, but they would have to get a grasp of handling transforming machines first (this is something). I find digging through jet designs and looking at ways the parts might fit a or contain a robot can be pretty inspiring - perhaps looking outside of robotech could help them improve robotech. That and maybe then they can leave macross alone . . . . .

At the very least the gullet has been removed, the legs have been entirely reworked making them proportional to the rest of the body (the old version had ridiculously long legs set very low - these are thicker, shorter, and much more battroid-centric), it has thicker arms, a slightly larger head, the gaps have been removed, multiple locks have been added to keep it stable in all modes (no floppy chest syndrome), it has a reworked panel under the "uniboob", a tinted canopy,the high-speed configuration, opening panels in the legs for missiles, and a massive weapons load-out (pretty much every missile ever shown with the YF-19). I'm thinking it's just a very high contrast photo they are using, but if not they are using darker more saturated colors. Whipped up a little side by side in battroid mode (I think this is the form where the differences are most obvious). The old YF-19 in this image has fast packs on, but it was the closest I could find stance wise to the Arcadia version (thanks to Anymoon - visit there for more shots of the first 1/60 YF-19).

My 1 wish for Arcadia: That they send me a copy of every Macross toy they make free of charge for in depth review purposes! Hey, no one said the wish had to be feasible . . . . ;P Barring that and throwing away the whole "1 wish" thing: VF-0 line (the whole shebang) The Varuta Valks Variable Gluag TV SDF-1 Flashback 2012 VF-4 VF-2SS VF-2JA Icarus

It all makes perfect sense - when Hollywood finally runs out of sequels and reboots, they'll start doing insane crossovers. It'll be "Son of Superman meets the undead corpses of Abbot and Costello"! Instead of Grown Ups 2 competing with Pacific Rim, we'll have Grown Ups ON Pacific Rim farting in the Kaiju's general direction . . . . . Tommy Yune's massive hit of Peyote might have predicted the future of film-making! I'd buy the comic just to get a sharpie and scribble the boys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 in at the bottom of each panel. I have no doubt each scene will be rife with potential for comic hilarity. By the way - does black lion have a giant dildo on his back? Is this Roy Harlock's new anti Meltrandi attack? I guess he figures once they go black they never go back . . . . Deep Hurting. Deeeeeep Hurting.

Well - it is an AFFORDABLE perfect transformation valk that appears to have been molded in virtually all of the right colors right out of the box (it is kinda odd that they even got the circles on the legs and the leg fins molded in the right red and black, but the head lasers are white . . . . .). It looks like it would be fun to build (something I kind of miss doing) and the engineering mechanisms on there are impressive - still . . . Personal opinion alert - standard disclaimer - personal opinion alert! I can't help but agree with a lot of other people here that the designers are good engineers but seem to have a relatively poor sense of proportion and aesthetics (and perhaps an incomplete understanding of their subject). As out of place as it looks for me, I can kind of give the head a pass because it IS proportionately larger in a lot of the battroid mode line-art and animation scenes. Yes, it IS often portrayed as pretty sunk down as well. However, part of what Yamato got right (imho) when they chose battroid proportions that skewed from a relatively line art accurate 1/8 head to body ratio to a "heroic" 1/10, is that when you give a robot the proportions of a basketball player, those legs and arms seem lanky but aesthetically balanced. When Bandai put panels on the inside of the legs that move to give the arms more room, (which, again, fits with how the line-art of the jet mode makes the arms just sink into the legs) It seems reasonable to expect thicker arms and legs - at least my eyes can't help but expect that thickness for visual balance when you give the robot proportions more suited for a comparatively stocky individual. Instead of looking like either a graceful full court athlete or a brawny brawler, this robot has proportions like, well, a funny looking little guy like me! We're sending joe blow average to fight genetically engineered giant supermen! There is a reason why superheroes never have "normal" body proportions.;P That and the leg joint system - wow, that breaks my heart. It's actually pretty cool mechanically, but it doesn't pay any attention to the images I've seen as to how it SHOULD be jointed - and even throws away some of the vestiges of human anatomy that we expect to see in a robot with such a classically elegant design. This VF-1 doesn't look like it can spread its legs, it looks like someone broke it's thigh bone right above the knee and the legs are just kinda flopping helplessly to the side - throw a reverse knee joint mechanism that's actually from the WRONG VF (its like the designer of the vf-25 knee-joint covered for somebody who was out sick and they just said - meh, it works) and the whole internal leg joint mechanism totally detracts from the beautifully accurate leg exchange mechanism. The funny thing is looking at the buildups, that internal leg joint system really is a thing of beauty until it goes into the actual leg . . . . Sadly, if Bandai had foregone that admittedly ambitious mechanism entirely, I could have chucked most of the other issues up to just being a different take on this mecha. The proportions are odd, but not out of line with what we see on a human body or even some artistic takes on this machine; the details are dense and really do lend a sense of realism to our beloved valkyrie; the build looks fun and requires minimal modeling skills so virtually anyone can enjoy the process of seeing this design come to life; ultimately it's inexpensive, doesn't much require extras like paint and glue, and comes with some legitimately innovative design points. To me this design strikes me as a tragic "almost" - like a genuinely fresh take on this design got it's legs broken by a mafia hitman (I'm imagining a Gundam with a giant baseball bat and a wicked moustache - TURN A GUNDAM IT WAS YOU!!!) =D However, this is one of the few Macross items out there I can actually afford, and because I kind of miss the process of seeing all these parts come together into a working whole, I might actually try to get it in hand so I'm not just another fanboy on the internet railing about something he doesn't have. Still - I would love to see Arcadia just detail up their kits. What Yamato (RIP) did in the past is already pretty darn close to a fabulous model kit you can actually play with - if they delved into the cad and added internal mechanical details that could be built into the current design I think they could "upgrade" their VF design without making the current 1/60 design adopters flip out (after all, it is a model). Then it might force Bandai to send Turn A home with his baseball bat and put out a model kit that's truly master-grade quality. Personal opinion/rant over - you can return to your previously scheduled programming!

I have really mixed feelings about this - Pitch Black is on my list of favorite sci-fi movies for a number of reasons, but almost all of them make the concept of giving it a sequel at all (yes, I watched chronicles) sketchy at best. Yes, it was a good horror movie (proving that showing less creates greater impact) but what made it stand out compared to a lot of what was out at the time was that it was character driven - you really didn't know if Riddick was a psychopath or a survivor. Then events changed a part of his character - that kind of well earned payoff doesn't happen much in sci-fi scripts (just his plaintive "not for me, not for me" was light-years beyond characters arching their backs and screaming noooooooo whenever someone dies). You really can't replicate it either . . . so in the end sequels end up being like sequels to Rambo: first blood. What happened to the PTSD, the question of what war does to a man once he comes home? Oh well, we get to see another beefy action hero try to out bada$$ himself again. Nonetheless part of me hopes that the creators somehow dig into that creative well that made them dream up that situation to begin with and dream up a new circumstance - maybe Riddick can end up being the cynic with someone who's walking the line between hero and villain, maybe dream up a fall as meaningful as the rise we got from Riddick. I'm hoping, but not terribly optimistic. After all, part of what Pitch Black had in its favor is that no one had any expectations - now expectations are impossible to ignore.

Y'know - for the most part I'm congenitally opposed to the whole concept of a rainbow valk . . . . but minus all the sticker graffiti the lines and flow of the design are surprisingly well done. The sheer fact that you can put a big blaring kite emblem on the back surrounded by rainbow streamers that turns the chest into a tuxedo coat and get all of those curves to flow into each other in all three modes is pretty darn impressive. Okay I still don't like the dark rainbow-bright color scheme, but if Tenjin was told he had to use all of those colors, he pulled it off with panache. What can I say- my funds are such that I can only pick and choose the most essential valks to add to my collection, but this really is about as good as it is possible for a full spectrum rainbow nascross valk to look.

Awesome - I remember having these cheapie "Converter" versions of the Galvion 1, 2 and Excallibur (99 cents each at the bargain bin at KB!). The little plastic toys were nowhere near as cool as the beautiful art they used on the packaging, but I loved the designs all the same and it looked to me like they could be done without all the anime magic. It's nice to see that some of the sweet, obscure mecha designs I always wondered about as a kid are getting a few moments back into the limelight! I personally hope they do them all, but that Galvion 1 looks pretty dead on. Awfully expensive though - sigh, just another complex interplay of plastic pieces to look at in other people's collections - still, I'm glad they exist at all!

Heh, I'm surprised a little creative bidding didn't allow Arcadia to get the licenses they needed. Since nothing they made was exactly 1/60th or 1/48th anyway couldn't they get away with getting the licence for something bizarre like a 1/58th or 1/65th scale and just release the same mold?

Well, this did pretty well despite the fact that some people are holding out for the Hikaru version - a mainstream release would probably be more popular and cheaper as well. I can't help but hope they milk the mold simply because I ended up having to choose between having this and having a home (how messed up is it that the cost of a valk is the same as my first months rent at the new apartment), so if they did a mainstream release a couple of months down the line I would be very happy. Besides, now that the molds are made if they pump out Max, Myria, Hikaru, Stealth, and Camo paint schemes in relatively small numbers, they'd probably make a tidy profit.

On board for the variable Glaug, Cutlass, and VF-14. Considering my previous landlord sold the house and I was forced to choose between having a VF-4 and having a new home, I'd love to see some variants (you don't know how close I came to sleeping in a Yamato box after seeing some of the reviews - sigh, it took me almost six months to save up four hundred dollars and it ended up going to a new landlord. Thank god my credit score is finally high enough I didn't have to do the security deposit ). If Yamato stays away from the pastel colors in the game, I think the Max and Milia versions could actually look pretty cool (personally rich dark reds and blues could make the touches of yellow look a lot less silly). Of course I'm still hoping for a Hikaru. If the bird is the word I suspect a Jamming bird. Not that it couldn't be a Sturmvogel or Pheonix, but somehow Jamming bird seems far more on point with the crack from Jenius, but we'll see at Winterfest (although in the sv-51 vs. VF-0 thread Graham did tell someone it would be wise to hold of on a VF-0, so the VF-0 pheonix is definitely a bird that could rise from the ashes of its original design and Yamato DID consider the VF-11 to be a failure. . . hmmm ).

Here's the mad list spitting out of my fevered brain: V2. YF-19 (It's gonna happen) Considerably improved VF-0 a, s, and D (likely I think) Considerably improved SV-51 T.V. SDF-1 (I think reasonably likely because of the success of the DYRL version - of course the Macross the first version would be easiest) Varauta Mechs (Fz-109 especially). I know they don't like doing enemy mecha, but these are pretty sweet variable fighters. . . . Battle 7 (someday I can see them completing the whole host of transformable Macross battleships available to them). And I'm sayin' it because no-one else is likely to: Variable Gluag! Another cool variable enemy to take on your collection. . . . Now since I've already treaded into the valley of the unlikely but not entirely out of the question: V2. Escaflowne Mospeada Legioss, Tread, and Ride Armors for Yellow and Fuke Orguss and Nickick VF-2S and VF-2J Just to delve into a level of stupid obscurity, I'm going to say Dorvak and Galvion. This is beyond never gonna happen just 'cuz I can go there . . . .

One is all I can afford (this sucker's three fourths of a paycheck for me). God help me though - I pre-ordered it! Hopefully Nippon-Yassan turns out to be a good choice. . . .

Y'know, sometimes I think people are responding so strongly to this valk because most of us didn't initially much like the design. The suprise, I suspect, colors the reaction. That and some people are still expecting something along the lines of the v2 YF-19 from Yamato, not realizing how far they've come. I find it interesting that Graham, probably the biggest VF-17 lover here, commented that he felt it was a step backwards in engineering from Yamato's 19 designs. Although, if its any defense, Yamato is on their third attempt at 19 design and also has a lot of other toys, models, and kits to look at as reference. Yamato's never done a 17, and as far as I know the only examples they have are the Bandai and Experten kits. Heh, I'm waiting for them to get to version 2. Of course, it's still a cool bad-a$$ black valk. Just after the Macross and the 19's we need more to be impressed- in my book that's a good thing!

Well, a good number of the people who said they would preorder it but weren't sure if they could afford it might still get it. I pretty much said that because the price limit I set in my head was nothing above 350 before shipping - higher than the 300 that almost half of the people polled set as their limit, but, well, arguably below "I will buy it at any price". Some people were probably also swayed by actually seeing how beautifully Yamato pulled off the design. This will hurt, and in the end will require seven months (yes, I started in June) of not going out, eating a lot of ramen noodles, and cancelling a few services - but its dooable. In the past I've wanted to be able to support Yamato's releases just so we could see something like this, but financially I was never able to. Now that I can (I'm out of debt at least and making a little better money) I want to support the fighter that I never thought I'd see, if only in the hope that means that some of the people who are disappointed that this isn't the Hikaru version might get that, a Max, a Myria in regular release. Just the fact that this thing has been made and appears to be made so well (all that die-cast makes me think this has got to be at least up to the standards set by Yamatos latest releases) has made my year. I suspect at least a few more VF-4 lovers are out there that are impressed enough with this sculpt to dive in despite their rational hesitation. It is funny to think that fifteen years ago people were shelling out more than this for not quite pristine Takatoku valks. Macross fandom has gotten so much better since the nineties . . . .

It looks beautiful, stands fine on its own (I'm suprised none of the pictures say "Look Ma, no stand!") and the colors really will work well next to my 1J. Now there are only two questions remaining: who will do the preorder, and when will it have to be paid? Heh, if the money doesn't come out of my account until its released I'm good, if it's right now, um, I'm in trouble (Been putting aside 60 bucks a month since June, so I'm just under halfway now, but by Dec. that should cover the cost and shipping. . . But if at all possible, this will be mine. Heh, instead of saving for a car or house, I'm saving for a beautiful hunk of metal and plastic. My parents are probably rolling in their graves . . . . But hey, life is short and joy even shorter - so there's no shame in grabbing it when you can!

Or some creative person outside of Japan can be inspired by Macross and write their own mecha series with heavy metal and awesome transformable jets, some of which homage the VF series. I can think of at least one company that could have done that many times and failed repeatedly to do anything but reuse or slightly update old designs. . . .. You definitely have a copious outpouring of ideas - there are a lot of gifted modellers, artists, designers, and writers on this site. One of these days we're going to have to sit down at a round table and see what we can come up with.