1/1 LowViz Lurker

Does anyone think Bandai will make this macross toy crap on purpose because they want gundam toys to succeed more than macross? With the only reason them wanting to do the toys being that they can just to *prevent yamato from having the license? *ie more as a hostile move to deny something to the competition more than because you care about the thing you are taking from it?

The two dangly bits on starscreams sides. edit: yeah what he said. So much controversy over that too. And now look at the movie starscream with the chunky underside. Dudes. If it were a choice between a Shoji Kawamori starscream with nice jet mode, (but with some liberal changes to modernise him) ...and.. a chunky jet mode with ugly-ass weapons that don't resemble the f-22 in the movie, then I'll take the Floating Head's jet any day.

Side parts....all 1/60 vf-1 should have them..... it's canon to the anime and a valk is naked without them..

Take your time yamato. Remember try to undo the dreaded first release curse for every release you make. These toys are too expensive to have flaws and stuff in them. That's the biggest damage to reputation you can get from the overseas buyer who can't just request a replacement part like the japanese buyer can. This is the key: maintain consistency and be more strict with QC so that you can limit the damage to the fans outside of japan. We will wait. (well I will anyway )

One thing I've noticed about the konig monster is in some pics of it in GERWALK mode, the arms are held in such a way that they just droop down at an angle like an underarm weapon. Now that I've seen that in a painting it doesn't worry me so much that the arm sort of flops down at a weird angle. As for vf-25: Oh yeah, the model looks good. Hopefully the toy gradually improves and if there are any bandai spies, they will listen to the feedback about what's bad about the 1/60 so they can get the right shape that pleases most people. When the armor is put on, it will thicken the look of the robot and bulk it up a bit. So I hope bandai has thought of the robot mode's ability to support the extra weight when designing the thing and also made sure it has good manly hands too. With a model it can barely be touched. I want a toy to be able to be handled. If bandai does a konig monster, hopefully they think about what parts need to lock in place and give it clicky joints so the toy can support its own weight. BTW what are the chances that after bandai has finished making their macross F toys, that years down the track yamato will be able to make their own 1/60 vf-25? So if this one ends up being bad, we will have something that has the proportions that please everyone? I mean we still haven't got a vf-17 from yamato right? And macross 7 ended ages ago. So what chance is there they will be able to one day do the vf-25?

Is the kit transformable is it? Looks good!

side armor pieces thanks yamato. Let those be the gimmick. Or they could be the detachable arms from the tv series. Remember when hikaru ejected them after getting hit by all the missiles in SDF:M? Then he flies down to earth in fighter mode, and then transforms into gerwalk without the arms?

Mecha, story and characters. If it wasn't called macross I would still watch it. When it gets localised you can just call it: "UN space wars: Attack of the Vajra Giant Armored Space Cockroaches" and we'll still buy it!

Messiah - I agree this sounds like a gundam robot name. But it fits in the macross world given they've named things from legendary weapons, legendary creatures, legendary warriors etc I wanted it to be matroska because of the new way it is controlled.

These are going to look nice near the vf-1 1/60. Battletech/mechwarrior fans will be happy.

I agree: skinny limbs looks ok. On the banprestos they look just right imo. (yeah I keep mentioning them but they do) However, IF there was a way to not compromise on the legs being skinny I would prefer they added a bit of bulk like the d-stance. It just means the robot won't appear too weak. haha. You can't say that about the girl robots in transformers though. They look pretty slim. Shhhh mr march is going to hear this. I'm with those who like clown feet if they can fit inside the thing. I don't know why but it just makes it seem more agressive, powerful, expressive. Coolness of knowing it is transformable because it shows you what is involved in the process of turning from one thing into another and back again. The closer it is to what you see in the lineart, show, the intention of the creator, etc the more value you can put on it. (I don't mean in terms of money but in terms of how that toy was designed, and how the creators of the toy took all the steps to make it work instead of cut corners or just said "it's too hard to make it" and then cheat by making it swap parts.) Having too much swapping parts is like the people who made the toy saying: "we don't care if the toy can actually do what it does in the show, just want you to believe it all happened and focus on the end result." I appreciate the look of the thing in final form as much as its ability to mimmick all the steps in-between. I think my main reason for not touching them too much stems from them being big toys: that is to say you bought a big toy for detail reasons more than because you necessarily needed it to be large. If you could cram lots of the details with no compromise in a smaller package and it was easy to hold, maybe you would touch it alot. But I find bigger stuff like the konig monster better to be left alone since there are parts that don't lock down firmly. (big cannon on the top) You would never do barrel rolls with a fast packed 1/48, but you might with a small banpresto or something that wasn't going to need you to put your hands on certain parts of the toy to keep it together. (ie chest that doesn't lock on the yf-19 for example ) Also I'd like to mention that fighter mode is the one mode where parts do lock down and firmly snap in place so maybe a lot of this has to do with people being too scared of floppy limbs if they play with it too much or the fear that their girlfriends/neighbours/friends would think they are kiddy and immature for having robots vs "realistic model planes" heheh Having the toys disguised is what hides them from others.

The people just lived inside the walls of it, right? And then when it transformed the artificial gravity made them stick to the walls so they wouldn't get dizzy I think? That's something I would like to know: where was the city inside the ship and what pieces of the city was destroyed as it transformed itself and squished the unfortunate people living in a piece that was going to have to be closed off?

I hope if they make a konig monster it can beat the yamato one in terms of looks and how you can have the cannon pointed forward in battroid mode. Also limbs with ratchets and stiffness.

I do try to keep up with watching all the shows, but macross toys still prevent me from getting into gundam model/toys. I think the whole: "enemy stealing ideas of the good guy" sort of wrecked the idea of the two sides having distinct robot design which turned me off because it feels like they want to milk a popular hero type and just make variations on the hero mech to boost sales. But storywise I liked it better when the Gundam was the only advanced thing and if it got stolen or destroyed or captured by the elite soldiers on the other side, it meant losing the war, so it was thrilling watching the outnumbered good guy have to run away and survive each battle and gradually get damaged and worn by the fighting. (but also get better in skill) One good guy with the 'hero' head turret who takes responsibility for the fate of the world = better than multiple heroes imo. They need to go back to the idea of making the hero robot "expensive" and rare, and hard to maintain like the old show. Not have groups of people using them like some kind of 8thMS Team just with newtypes. As past shows have demonstrated: it can make a fight seem confusing. Battles are less dangerous if the good guy loses because there are other advanced robots out there too. When there is a group, sole responsibility doesn't rest on one person who gets bitch-slapped for taking too much unnecessary risks or going off by himself without help. (which as a good theme from the old school show, because it highlights the danger of losing the war if the bad guy can just copy the good guys robot after studying it and the whole arms race - good guys in newer shows already have the best tech and are not in fear of having to catch up to the bad guy so it makes them seem too invincible) In old show the average grunts' role was important as support for the hero for the battle to be won. I think by the time gundam Wing came out, it went away from that idea and made them too strong and too numerous! Sure maybe the hero is more popular and sells more toys but the show suffers if there are too many variations of the hero mecha involved in a single battle because now there is none of that danger anymore. (ie losing the tech in the wrong hands by fleeing in a ship so the elite can't take it, risk of damage due to no parts etc) Instead of: -the kid in the robot being saved by the superior technology of the gundam (and not his noob skill which is due to lack of battle experience) where the elite bad guy pilot must actually go easy on him so as to not risk destroying the only surviving prototype. it's more like: -there is no hurry to run away, because the good guys can rape every other robot there is due to the hero being a common robot that a team of people use. No need to run away as if you have the plans for the Deathstar or to sneak being detected, because hey, "we have an uber strong weapon that can kill whole groups of inferior robots and pilots that are already experienced in battle skill right from the age of 12. Even if it gets destroyed/captured/stolen that's ok, because we are 50 years ahead in technology and have unlimited money to make more so there is no consequence for failing. And no need for grunts or an experienced crew to help out by buying time or stalling an advance in some way, because we have other super ace hero robots to do the job."

I gave up all my gundam toy/model money for macross toy/model money. Gundam has way too many robots in it to be honest. What they should do is limit the number of robots in a show and focus only on 1 or 2, because I think by the time seed came out, it was getting hard to differentiate one gundam from another gundam when the fights showed gundams fighting against each other. It was very confusing. If the shape is unique or there is a special theme to the robot that makes it more identifyable then I am happy. Which is why I like 00. The way I see it is each side should have 1 or 2 identifying features that best represents that "race" on the robot so when they fight they don't become a confusing mess like with the fights in the seed shows. (so many "hero" head turrets!) I think the goofy 70s robots is part of the appeal. Robots with 70s style flares. Overweight fat robots with big-ass cat claws. Heroes that insist on using melee weapons to fight in an age of guns to prove who is more 'right'. (ie reminds me of star wars) Also I miss the idea of "dismantling and rebuilding" from the older show: when the parts were too valuable that they couldn't just make more than one robot so they had to dismantle parts from an original to make a different one like a kid taking apart his bicycle and mixing it with other bike parts. Why don't they do that for these new mecha shows? Where you can upgrade it like a pc if you are too poor to afford big upgrade across the board and have to gradually buy stuff in stages because it's too expensive? Like lets say a knee gets damaged, and it can't walk so they pull apart the torso and make the treaded version of that robot instead and then choose only to fight on sandy rough environments to survive? (just an example of pulling apart a half-busted robot and reusing it after a big fight) These days they can have 5 robots and have them all rape other robots with ease because there is no hurry to keep up with the enemy. (ie arms race between the two sides to make the best robot) They are ready-made, and have a head start.

The skinny hands look funny when using GBP that's all mr march. You've seen it yourself with the yamato gbp. Just a little bit bigger/beefier makes all the difference. Gunpods are really long. Bigger hand = better grip.

VF-25 sort of reminds me of the nirvash from eureka 7. The pointy feet (like the Qrau) and the skinny body give off that effect. I just think that if the hands were squarish (not rounded like bubble hands, or delicate like the chicken hands) that it would meet a nice balance. Anyone think the Banpresto VF-1 hands are just right? All they need to do is ensure the robot forearms are beefy (popeye the sailor man ) so that when the toy is made it can easily fit inside it without making it delicate looking. As I mentioned before in macross plus the only reason sharon apple went out of control was because the programmers cheated. Maybe in the future they solved all the hurdles and managed to get an AI that was useful and could act autonomously and learn and stuff? Only a matter of time before they create the army of transformable ghosts making valks and powered armor obsolete just like the destroid, reguld etc.

Same here. It kind of "felt unnecessary" because of that. But it's not as bad as people make it out. I think my main criticism is how it wasn't really about war, more a battle of good vs evil and the main villain was too easy to hate. They could have added a twist to the story and go down a path the original show didn't to make it interesting: like make the emulators convert humans to the alien's cause instead of the other way around in SDF:M. And then have humans turning against each other and causing a war amongst their own kind. (infecting it with an evil version of culture and causing a global war, racism, a spread of hate propaganda etc) Despite the fact it's not canon I think it could have had potential and added a great "what if?" storyline to the macross universe. "What if the humans were contaminated by evil and manipulated by an alien race's culture?" Would we have acted acted violently just like the zentradi did in SDF:M and fight to keep our traditions and fear alien belief systems were taking over our children's minds with ideas that we are against? One thing later macross shows lacks is the depth of the original which questioned the humans actions as much as the aliens since humans have waged wars against each other since the beginning of time. You can say that if people loved maybe there wouldn't be wars, but what if the aliens were more cultured than humans and tried to convert us to their ways and contaminated earth with their customs? This would make the universe interesting because it wouldn't assume that humans were the most evolved and civilised race out there. Just different, and lucky for having the best weapons due to a ship that crashed onto the world. All the old problems would still exist: racism, elitism, fight for controls over land etc. Aliens invading doesn't make those old problems disappear. Just postpones them. (as we see minmay's music loses its effect when she isn't feeling happy and her performance drops, or the aliens learn to be "cultured" but still act violently as well. The giants that lost the war who had a human girlfriend might still want to retain some of their old beliefs: proud that they served their former controllers who needed soldiers like them for defense. But we never got to see stuff like that in macross II which could have presented "the other side of the story" ie perhaps showing even worse alien races in existence out there in the universe that the PC feared which made them create the giants.) If they had added a twist and gone down a different direction, maybe people would start to like macross II for attempting to expand on the universe rather than copy what already was done by the original tv series and movie. I think when people are scared of something alien to them or just think it would be easy to take something from another (because of he belief that they are more civislised, superior, evolved) they try to convince themselves that it's ok to kill, use, enslave other races for their benefit since "that other race is less civilised, so it's ok". If they went down the path of making a race of aliens more civilised than humans, and have the humans fight for their freedom to keep their traditions and maintain their culture, then it wouldn't just be about humans being the only ones that were cultured. It would be one of many other aliens races fighting for control over each other just like wars fought on earth. Perhaps have humans form an alliance with rogue zentradi and use them to fight the other race or something? Anything to show that humans although well-meaning, and having the best weapons, might not be fit to take control over other races if they can't solve their own problems (the racism, wars, xenophobia etc) first. The original war (Space War I) would have been a battle for survival against all odds, the second war could be about rogue zentradi having to choose to ally with their old enemies against humans, or to join in a fight for survival (but maintaining their old traditions of thinking that war is the "meaning of life since its our full time job") with humans against the more-cultured race of aliens that wants to convert humans over their their beliefs. Would the rogue zentradi be seen as bad and evil to humans if it was them who came to their rescue after the more-cultured-humans alien race had enslaved them and forced them to give up their music or traditions to assimilate with them? Maybe some rogue zentradi would be celebrated as heroes, or the human sympathisers to rogue zentradi would then convince more humans that just because they are a warlike race and destroyed planets, doesn't mean humans wouldn't also have attempted to control or destroy other races that they didn't like or just wanted to control "because they can" (due to being more evolved/civilised/cultured or whatever.) I think if macross II had more "shades of grey", rather than be black and white, it would be more interesting. Like the race of aliens in space battleship yamato, you can still have warlike groups within a civilised culture forced to kill to survive due to the planet dying. So why not have humans "be the bad guy" forced to use their former enemies (rogue zentradi) to aid, to demonstrate that nothing really changes since ancient times despite the advancement in civilisation and sophistication with weapons? The message being that no race, including humans is fit to have absolute power and the other races exist to ensure that no one race has absolute power over each other so long as each race keeps attacking and growing in sophistication which forces them to compete until one dies? Once humans spread themselves to survive from becoming extinct, they will eventually have to face the problem of what to do when they disagree with each other and get into a war? I think a sequel that involved an alien race who tried to convert humans to their culture, would bring up new questions that the first couldn't go into.(does being more cultured and hearing basara's songs automatically mean you won't kill people, blow things up, or act destructively like the warlike races which at least had an excuse for acting that way since it was mind programming?)

I agree. Visually it is not as appealing or dramatic to see it do it so fast but in combat it makes a lot of sense. When the sv51 transformed instantly in macross zero it didn't give you time to apreciate WTF just hapened. If people who had no idea the planes transformed saw that, they'd be confused. Whereas when you see roy tranform his vf-0 in slow motion in macross zero, people can understand what is happening at each step. I'm a fan of slow transformations for introductions but like fast transformation during fights. Slow transformations just remind you that there is a step in between modes so it just feels right. Fast transformations fit the flow of the action in an intense fight. (ie when an ace is shooting down some missiles with the gunpod in battroid mode, then to escape quickly he/she transforms into fighter at high speed to avoid being hit. Stuff like that. A slow transformation means it would not be possible to use it as a move in the heat of a fight or just to look good: for example when dyson purposely dives to the ground in robot mode in macross plus, and the quickly goes into GERWALK mode at the last moment.. ) I think the speed of a transformation should just be a setting each pilot is allowed to decide for himself. If it makes you feel sick then they could slow it down a bit. But this is a show where you see Qrau darting away at sudden speed and changing direction instantly with no problem on the person inside it. So I'd imagine people would be used to instantaneous transformations by now. (but as I mentioned, slower ones make more sense for introductions so people understand what is going on. A bullet time effect should be applied for drama and to "focus" on that aspect of the mech at first and then after that go back to fast transformations imo. This way you get the best of both worlds: people understand what is happening, then get the exciting "just in time" moments they like from the speedy transformations)

Even if they just have f-22 that transform into robots (like what landmine is as a character that didn't appear in the movie but whose alt mode did) at better quality I would be happy. Sector 7 transformable valkyrie!

There is a trick to the gun you have to fold it up and then have his hand grip the folded bit as if it were a handle while the chain of bullets made of flexible plastic holds it to his hand by the pressure of the plastic which wants to resist bending. (it flexes though so nothing will crack) The back of his hand is "ribbed" so the bullets kind of sit inside snugly to add a bit more grip along with the foled hand. The way it should be folded is that the handle of the gun forms a "Z" shape. Actually more like a __ | |__ shape. The vertical bit of the grey foldy plastic is where his fingers and thumb should grip with the flexible plastic bullets snugly gripping the "ribs" on the one side of his hand/seat. The one good I've noticed is how the rollerskates is an optional transformation. You can just leave the wheels on his ankle if you don't like the idea of skates although it doesn't look as good. The joints: -collar bone joint,(for raised shoulder poses) -balljointed shoulder -ball jointed elbow -ball jointed wrist -palm joint (two way) -opposable thumb (two way) -bendy thumb -fingers/claws that bend -balljointed head -stomach swivel -balljointed legs -thigh swivel -two way knee bend -two way ankle bend (keep feet flat on the ground for those crouch poses) and the gimmicks of using his weapon as a shoulder gun is pretty cool too. Only problem I think is if you don't like skinny "EVA" styled skinny robots (you ar more into block ones) he might not appeal to you. He kinda reminds me of what a terminator would like in the transformers world. (if they were remade with five eyeballs) I have a theory: it was landmine who was the one who caused the freddy krueger/wolverine marks on the wall in the movie.

Best new movie deluxe toy imo. -Good posability ("classics mirage"-levels-of-goodness: hip joint, balljoints in limbs and wrists, swivel leg joints etc) -the gun looks like a gun in bot mode. (not some oversized scifi blaster but something that looks humanoid-ish) -sculpt is good -face is actually fugly but in a good way like wreckage. Not like Arcee fugly.

If I were to guess: Either it was the attempted "rape", or she rose up in status in the world and let the childish dream of being a great singer go away due to thinking she must "move on" from all the bad memories tha she had 7 years ago. Sort of like when someone moves house because they just broke up from an ex and doesn't want any reminders of that person around so they move away to escape. But dyson's interpretation of that is that she is a quiter who gives up too easily (she should fight for her dream to the end) which is fair enough since she was the one that started crying and whining about how her dreams could never come true and the that boys should grow up and stop fighting because "it's childish". (I guess the point was she wanted to put them both through a guilt trip so that they should feel grateful for having their dream come true but hers didn't) Dyson's reaction was completely justified imo. Because why should he and guld be her emotional crutch? At the start of the ova she was gloating about how she had succeeded in the world. Then she went all shinji at the end. If she wanted to move on, she should have confronted the past and continued on with her dreams as if nothing changed, not run away from it. Oh and to the mention of basara as perfect: I mean in the sense that although he is hated, the idea is that he was given a super duper valk, is allowed to go into the battlefield, can pilot a valk with a guitar, not get killed or come close to it, and not have any fear in such a dangerous environment. My reaction is: I'd be scared to fly directly into the battlefield all by myself but basara is like a super hero. No ace can touch him. Where did all this skill come from? At least in macross Zero you see Shin gradually come to grips with the philosophy of the valkyrie and get better over the course of the 4 episode OVA. With Basara he is invulnerable. Even max had to break a sweat in his one-on-one duel with miria in DYRL. Just the way it was presented: it takes away the danger of the enemy and makes them cartoony villains like Wile E Coyote. (ie we think they are just incompetent and stupid and that's why they fail.) But Basara is just the best pilot in the galaxy such that he can take on a whole group of Qrau, yet the military aren't even a little bit curious about how he can be such a good pilot? The show never delves into the past in much depth, because they like the idea of keeping the character mysterious. But this comes at the expense of being hard to relate to since he can do anything. No need to invent reaction weapons, build gunpods, research new tech when you have a super hero who can do everything.

But he saves the entire galaxy singlehandedly and can dodge everything using his guitar to control the valk and never breaks a sweat. Seems almost like a superhero compared to everyone in the military who trained their butts off to become as good as they are. It's like how some people who don't like macross II because they think it borders on super robot (massive weapon), where in macross 7 the pilot to me is a super pilot. The principle is the same: you get to a point where it's hard to accept for reasons of believability. It just is. The lack of danger, the idea that even the best Qrau pilots (at miria's level of skill) can barely even touch him, just makes him too 'perfect'. Contrast that to what you see in macross plus where guld puts his life on the line to save lives, and dyson almost dies from hypnotic spell and only just survives by the skin of his teeth, it's just not the same thing I want. SDF:M showed us the danger of flying and fighting and the fear of combat: you knew hikaru could be next like the cannnon fodder next to him. In terms of his personal life, Hikaru just didn't seem as sure of himself and the reasons for why he was even doing what he was doing. Only up until friends died did you sense a stronger conviction for putting meaning and a sense of duty into the fighting and this is the point where he "grew" as a character. Plus had pilots that were cocky and knew what they wanted, but who got close to death showing off. You knew there was a sense of danger despite the fact that majority of time the pilot were in control of the planes. This need to push the envelope was what makes them interesting to watch. Maybe you secretly hope one of them dies or they crash or something like watching a dangerous circus stunt? Macross 7 just didn't allows us to see any kind of threat since basara is better than the best pilots the military has to offer and there is never any real history of the origins of the character. It's that one thing that doesn't allow normal people to relate well to him as a person, other than what his political belief is. Yes yes maybe that was the point: make all of us the audience, actually think. It might be original in the same way that gundam wing was original for breaking the mold and allowing gundam to be more flashy and focus less on "psychic power" element of the shows. But it just isn't what I like as much as what the original macross had. (ie being a fly on the wall and seeing characters gain experience and mature over time vs just have super abilities and no past. Like a mysterious recluse who nobody knows anything about and seems to just have amazing skills which aren't explained)

Great reviews. Finally it came out. Hopefully it sells a lot and maybe like with the ride armor toys, we get some competition between companies to make more mecha from mospeada. If the masterpieces had just been made with enough QC I would have become a toynami fanboy. So would you say these are considered as toys or models/masterpiece display pieces? Why couldn't for example, toynami just sell these in the US under the robotech brand as proper 'toys', and not collectibles that you leave inside the box?