eugimon

Got a job?? Typical response from an american capitalist oppressor!!! Why can't yamato make these valks for much cheaper when there is such a high plastic surplus? and surely the CAD design should drive down costs! Valks should be free! We should be able to get them with our morning newspapers!

hmmm, no... doesn't do it for me. If lois is going to show up investigating the murder... does this mean lois is older than clark?

you need to give some room for animation error... besides it hard to get a good sense of size unless you can compare with something your eye understands, or if the two are posed right next to each other... Kinda like the enterprise D and romulan bird of prey (off topic, I know) but the bird of prey is twice the size of the enterprise but in the show, you'd never know it.

That's amazing work! How about getting another class to make a battroid or gerwalk mode version?

I like the way this guy looks.. I wish it was a little more squat in gerwalk mode, but I can deal. don't have a problem with the length of the cannons but I would like to see the little nose mounted turret though.. I always thought that was a nice realistic touch, on such a slow long range weapon you would want something for up close fighting. I am really hoping the price on this will be reasonable.. around the 100 dollar mark.. I know I'm dreaming but I think 120 or 160 is just way too much.

There are some things though that are a bit wonky... the arms have a hard time staying stowed away in fighter mode and the weight of the boosters make the valk lean backwards unless you pose them creatively. Those are just minor though... you won't be sorry getting the FPs's, the quality and detail will astound you.

uhm... no no, my valk is perfect! your's has a horrible flaw, it could be sign that your flaw is possessed by the dread entropy demon! quick, send the valk to me before the entropy demon gets out and starts to create flaws in other things!!!

ok. she's hot. like very. yes. very. super cute.

What has yamato done for macross since the first 1/48's? let's see... there were the various two seater 1/60s the 1/60 Q-rau and there was the second 1/48, and since repaints don't count, the thrid 1/48 (1s and 1j) the FP editions of the mac plus valks (yes, no yf-19 whine whine whine) and coming down the pipe: the 1/100 VF-0 that variable monster the yf-19fp the GBP armour plus the fact that macross zero hasn't even run it's full course yet. Is this the new yamato is evil and mean argument? I'm sure eventually yamato will stop producing macross toys, but really, within a year? By next year even? not likely. Besides, you got it wrong, yamato started with more popular licenses and moved into doing high end stuff for macross.

Should not be in, but one will find itself in that situation, so why not give the pilot a something to tip things in their favor a little. Just because something's not meant to be in a particular situation, does not mean it will never find itself in that situation, especialy in a battlefield situation. crap happens, doesn't hurt to be prepared. Remember this line... VF-11 pilot: "crap! my gunpod's jammed! Mayday! Mayday!" Like with Isamu's wingman in Macross Plus, you just might find yourself in a situation where the enemy is in your face and you can't shoot them. What's interesting about that line is that Isamu's wingman was in trouble because Isamu left his wingman. You never leave your wingman, you never go it alone. If you are in a situation where your weapon becomes combat non functional, your squad mates are there to back you up. You do not pull a sword and start swinging away. Why? Because, a sword is not an elegent weapon no matter waht kenobi says. You need space to swing that thing around and if you don't know what you're doing, you're likely to hurt yourself as well as the enemy. While you're swinging away, if we're talking about infantry, you're going to hit the person next to you unless you're fighting in formation with short swords. In which case you dont swing, you stab and hack and the person next to you protects your flanks. If you're using a long sword, battle tactics change. there is more space between combatants, and yet most encounters only last few moves. The idea of a prolonged sword fight is fantasy. IF you're spread out like this, you become easy targets for anyone with a ranged weapon. Once again, let's look at history. Even in Feudal Japan, once longbows and later fire arms were developed/introduced, sword fighting became a very very specialized part of warfare. It eventually became a martial arts form.. like fencing. It simply does not make sense to give soldiers melee weapons. It requires extra training, training that must be kept up continually. It requires drilling with melee weapons with other units so you don't kill/maim friends, and it requires extra equipment. It also promotes heroics... this is a bad thing. People who charge into battle and leave their squadmates behind die but worse they make it difficult for their mates. It is much better to train your soldiers to be cautious and look out for one another. Sword fighting is fun to watch, it is impressive and has the cool factor, but in modern warfare a sword fight is an anachronism.

If valks are supposed to approximate infantry in modern warfare.. I think all we need to do is look at modern infantry. For close in fighting, infantry use fire-arms. Everything from hand guns, to shotgun type weapons, to automatic rifles. They do not go in with swords and other melee weapons. Even my old sensei said, "If you want to learn how to defend yourself from an attacker, go buy a gun and learn how to use it." This from a man who was had 3rd degree or higher black belts in 5 different forms, and lower black belts in a few more for good measure. The idea of fighting with giant swords is silly... incredbily silly, so silly you have to start inventing reasons why they fight with swords... they have "special" powers that lets them block enemy ranged attacks are other fantasy. Swords are only good against unamred opponents or oppenents who are similarily armed.

I like ewilen's idea for the strike... the thing does have that HUGE sensor mounted on it, afterall. Besides, it wouldn't take much movement of the cannons to alter the direction of the shot... especially at the ranges shown in the anime... a tiny adjustment of the barrels, say 1 degree, could have a huge impact on where the beam will go. I also agree that a pilot can learn to do surgery with those guns manually... but why.. the computers are there so why not make the most use of them?

I actually think I'm done collecting VF-1s.. well, maybe the miria 1/48... but I'm waiting for some valks from mac zero... and I'd really love some ver 2.0's of the macross plus and even the mac 7 valks.

Last I heard, there was still some debate whether it was a planet or planetoid... they weren't sure just how big it is. Anyways, I voted no. I would like yamato to finish some other stuff before starting a new project... you know, yf-19 fp... sv-1. heck, I really want a vf-5000. I would much rather see these produced than and SDF-1.

Why are some people get so flustered when a topic that has been discussed before? Is it such a crime? Not everyone checks the forums every hour. Do I have to do an extensive search on past literature before I post? People are just talking casually - not doing their thesis. There seem to be a group of people who get a kick out of pointing out when a topic has already been discussed (often providing a link). Like library archivists. I don't mind that, but they are often very disrespectful, saying things like "Not this again..." I bet even a post just like mine has been posted before. If each topic was posted only once forever, there would be very little room to discuss anything. Same for real life. Also, even if a topic has been posted before, different people will reply the second time. Providing a different perspective on things. Apologies for the ranting. I thought the 1/48 was the most IN proportion toy. my post was obviously in jest. The post was designed to provoke a response, and so I made a funny. no big deal. But I apologize to samuraid if there was any offense. and I just want to add: *This has been posted before, can't you use the search function? it's there for a reason people. *This? This is nothing, you should have seen the flame war on the old board when the 1/60's came out! chunky monkey versus needle dick, now THERE was a flame war!

yay! this again! let's sum it all up: *1/48's are the bestest ever! *no MPC are best in gerwalk *<everyone else points and laughs> *Yamato sucks! 1/48's are too expensive! *Oh yeah? well, bandais are fugly and have a SWING BAR! *Yeah... well, 1/48's have small floppy hands! *1/48's have built in heat shields and knee guards! *but the 1/48 are soooo fragile! unlike my sherman tank chunky monkey! *No way, my 1/48 is super strong! *Yamato is evil and are ripping us off! how come they keep making new toys??? *Shut yer pie hole, 7 years ago NO ONE was making new valks so yamato can do no wrong! *How come no one loves 1/60's??? *your mom is a 1/60, oooh, burn. *how come the MPc convoy is cheaper, huh??? *does anyone know when the yf-19 fp is coming out? there. all done.

well, yamato never lives up to its own hype... much less the hype of speculative macrossworlders... heh.

I say it was sculpted. has that sculpted look to it.

I'm with shin! I'll get the 1/100's but the 1/60 is the one I really want no matter how much it costs PS: I've been converted, arguing about things not out yet, based on pure speculation... these things are what makes this board fun!

Well, I do agree that material and engineering make up some of the cost... and yes, the VF-0 should be easier to translate than the VF-0... but I don't see yamato breaking from their track record and pricing a larger vf-0 at premium prices. Given that the Q-rau was a risky unit for yamato... that alone still does not justify such a HUGE mark up. Design wise... the Q-rau is very straight forward, few points of articulation and simple construction and nearly no painting. After giving it some thought, I think there is another factor we're not talking about... in order to keep the prices of their macross toys stable... they have to release toys at certain price points. kinda the same way grain and dairy producers artificiallyinflate their prices to keep themselves in business. If yamato released prices at more reasonable rates, given the limited macross market and the small group of new macross fans (no new TV series), the macross wagon would dry out. it just wouldn't be worth to keep producing these toys. Keep in mind that compaines like hasbro have a hand in both the animation and the toys... the animation is a 30min commercial for the toys. Yamato does not have this luxury... they license the rights to produce toys and I'm sure they need to produce a certain level of profit in order to justify keeping the license (for both yamato execs and bigwest execs). That's why I think... that no matter the circumstances, yamato will continue to market their premium toys at higher price points than other toys of similar size/design/construction.

the price point of the qrau has little to do with material cost, or complextiy ( look at mpc convoy as an example, more expensive materials a lot of moving parts- relatively low price). it has everything to do with market, demand and licensing. (if big west want's a larger cut for the rights to produce these toys, then guess who gets to pick up the tab?) and since yamato is probably convinced that macross collectors are willing to pay well over a hundred dollars for their premium lines, I don't think expecting a 1/60 macross zero toy to cost as much as a 1/48 vf-1 is out of the question. besides, those swing bars in the anime are pretty darn thin, yamato would have to use pretty strong metal to be able to pull that off and still keep it in scale with the art. Complexity of design, material cost these things are probably minimal... after all, they pay the designers on salary it's not like they get royalties off of every unit sold. Even if the designers get paid 100,000 a year, it wouldn't take much to make that much up. It's all about market... how big is your market, what is the market willing to bear, how likely is it that your market will grow, how likely is it you'll saturate the market and drive down interest... these things probably make up more of the cost than anything else.

not necessarily, if the barriers work by absorbing/redirecting energy until depleted then it seems like the barriers absorbed most of the energy, dissipated and what was left did the damage shown. So if the barriers were not there, the damage would have been much worse. imo.

Holy jumping to conclusions G-man! is that a toy of the rare un spacy variable airliner I see in the bottom left hand corner of the page? Ooooh, I want the southwest variant!

hmm, if some were to do a metal recast of this part... and uhm, maybe paint it to match ( for those of us who can paint guache but not models...) I would be happy to put down an order for three...

Has anyone tried epoxy on this area? My one complaint about the 1/48 is the backpack... I don't think it sites high enough in battroid and too far back in gerwalk ( the line art makes it look right behind the canopy ) and oh yeah, that part is fragile...