1/1 LowViz Lurker

Yeah but mr march you also saw kamjin punch the chest plate and dent it with his hand. Now imagine say another robot punching it? (just as milia was seen punching right through the cockpit of the male zentradi powered armor and blasting that guy point blank in the face?) I think it's not just about the armor, but the leverage you get by having the manipulator fingers set wider apart for gripping. A little kid with small hands wouldn't be able to grip a basketball with a single hand with palm facing toward the ground without it slipping out of his hand. But a hand with longer fingers and bigger hand might be able to do it easily. It's just that bigger hands would be more suitable if the manipulater was designed for more heavy work. So let's say the two battroid are in a wrestle up close (like in SDF:Macross post war when ammo was scarce) the guy with the claws or big hands can grip much easier and then rip a limb off because the hand can easily wrap around say an arm or a wrist and it won't slip when the other guy struggles to break free. A small-handed robot trying to fight a mecha with bigger hands upclose is going to have more problems gripping the body part of the mecha due to the way the hand was designed. I'm just saying that there would be a real world advantage to have bigger hands, not that small hands are necessarily weak and useless. (personally it never bothered me since valks kill with gunpods) True in the tv series they were simplified to make them easier to draw, (I know this) but if these boxing glove designs *were* canon, the vf-1 with bigger hands would have advantages as I outlined above due to better grip, fingers are wider apart, and generally being thicker. A head laser or small finger is still *more* delicate than a part on the robot that isn't fine and skinny. (assuming the energy converting armor is equal on all parts of the robot) Small hands do not mean it's 'weak', but bigger ones do not mean there are zero advantages over smaller ones is what I'm trying to say. So if a larger mecha needed to grip the arm of a smaller mecha it could easily provide a stronger grip (better leverage) because of the way the palm and fingers could wrap around the arm and then proceed to throw the smaller mecha. But if a smaller mecha wanted to grip a larger mecha's arm, it would have problems gripping because it's hand might not be able to wrap around the arm properly due to being smaller and having shorter fingers. (and not being designed for that role in the first place, more of a secondary role) It's like comparing GBP armored valk to a naked valk. A GBP still offers better protection than a valk without the extra armor. Not to say that the energy converting armor isn't already good enough, just that having that PLUS some GBP is going to increase chance of survival with the extra thick armor you just added on top of what you already have. (The weakness being you might be slower and bigger with the armor on so you are an easier target to someone with anti-armor weapons.) I'm just saying there are advantages and disadvantages to each design based on what role the mecha was supposed to be good for. Small hands: better accuracy manipulating small things like people, pushing little buttons on a console, pulling triggers on smaller weapons where the skinny finger can fit through. But poorer grip, smaller joints on the wrist etc Boxing gloves/bigger manipulator: thicker armor, better grip (like the claws on the Qrau) more mass meaning a heavy punch. But less accuracy/poorer articulation due to armor/fat getting in the way. Is this overanalysing? Yes. But size and thickness of the armour along with mass, and the design matters. I think a realistic robot show should allow for those things to make a difference to make it seem more realistic. So a race of aliens who specialise in fighting up close and prefer to outnumber the others by attacking from multiple directions with sheer numbers is going to have mecha that is good for that style of killing vs a race who get by fine on pinpoint barriers and giant cannons that can kill whole groups of things with one shot at a long distance, but who are doomed if the shot misses and could never win with small numbers if they didn't rely so much on those weapons. In shows like gundam they take into account the range of weapons too and have certain mecha that are helpless upclose but great for long range. So all this stuff does matter to the geeky fan who finds the stuff of interest.

Here are some old images for reference on my HD (not the greatest quality mind): transformation: Too bad yamato won't be able to make one of these in toy form. Why can't they just get kawamori drunk, make him sign something saying he's ok with making the toy, and then quickly make it without him remembering anything?

Post pics of the damaged windscreens.

an example of "zomg new internet technology!1" to the rescue? http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-devs-in...ryption-080215/ Arrrrrrrrrggg!

They could call this release the Global Wave Model:

http://purekapya.blogspot.com/2007/12/excl...4-gameplay.html ^ the link above doesn't work, this is what it should be. Looks bloody amazing.

Again it's going back to the exaggerated expression you see in anime. In darkstalker this happens a lot. And I think in alpha when e.honda does his butt stomp move you will see the character on the ground have thier eyeball pop out of thier eyesockets. So no don't be surprised at funny expressions as this is the coninuation of everything that has been in SF since the beginning when people had little birds circling their head when they got dizzy. I would really like to see Haggar from final fight in Street Fighter 4. He would be the rival for gief like what karin was to sakura, ken was to ryu, Adon is to sagat, and charlie was to guile.

Will be paying attention to fragility reports of this. Still going to get the CMs though because of the PT and better proportions.

Well DYRL and tv series show two different types: one with more robotic looking hands and the other with bubble hands. But if a mecha with larger hands got into a fight with one with smaller hands and they wrestled, does it not make sense that the larger and more bulky mecha would have some advantage? (if they both had equal armor type and had the energy converting armor) Just saying...vf-11 might take a bit longer to crush a head turret than a yf-19 if it were forced to fight without gunpod due to some reason. (like the shortage of ammo as seen in SDF:M post war) I would say if the battroid with small delicate hands had to grip a rounded object with its fingers it would have more chance of slipping from its hold than one with larger hands and a wider grip. (just because wider offers better leverage) It would be like comparing an adult who can hold a large basketball in his palm with one hand upsidedown (palm facing floor) vs a kid who can't hold it because his hand is too small and offers less grip. The basketball would slip free from his grip due to his fingers being short. So the design of the hand does matter if close combat is the specialty. (which I don't think valks are designed for, but just wanted to make the point that size and design would matter in the real world) Now there might still be advantages to smaller hands: you can press buttons easily, fix things and do more fine work that requires precision over power. Your skinnier fingers might be able to grip a gunpod trigger from a gunpod that wasn't designed to be used with your mecha and you can still fight using weapons you pick up along the way. So it's not all bad! Just as a boxer wearing boxing gloves can't grip anything with gloves, only punch.

If the hands have to punch through armor they might get wrecked. If they punch an unarmored thing they won't be so bad. If kamjin can bust up the head with a crowbar or britai can rip off the chestplate, then there has to be the possibility that the hands might get broken, And yeah you do see the hands rip through the wall in DYRL, but remember how in the tv series when max and hikaru and kakizaki had to use the head lasers to burn their way out of a ship complaining that they'd run out of ammo? I wouldn't trust the imagery in the anime since it is inconsistant. Just like the scene of roy flying up into space to meet the sdf-1 without the aid of special boosters. I like to think that the hands like the head turret is still more delicate to the other parts of a valk in the same way that a valk still benefits with GBP armor even though it is pretty 'tough' without it and can smash into concrete without being crushed. There must be varying levels of armor, and something like a Spartan can crush the hands of a valk if the two ever tried to thumb wrestle, maybe because of the better construction and overall thickness and level of armor put into it? So a lighter fighter plane is not going to need or have as much of this armor as a heavy-use ground mecha which might be weighed down with thicker armor that a fighter wouldn't have because it might slow it down? It's such a geeky discussion. Personally I don't mind skinny hands because it needs to fit into the sleeve, (I just like big hands included with the toys ) but I'm just saying that although a robot might look tough because it can bash into a building and not get wrecked, it might get wrecked in a close to close fight with another robot which is more heavily armored than it and that is where you might see those delicate parts like the head laser and hands and joints be under threat of snapping and breaking. Part of it is the armor level, part of it is leverage (a qrau uses beefy looking claws for example which could crush more easily by being set further apart to grip things than the fingers on a 'hand') and another is the overall size of the mecha. (as pointed out: yf-19 is still a bigger valk than a vf-1 so naturally even though proportionally it has small hands compared to itself, the hand might still be bigger compared to the vf-1) And yeah we all know that the bubble hand is to make it easy to draw for the animators, but in the event that a mecha comes out with beefier design, does it not make sense to assume that the bigger and thicker and bulkier design will natrually be more robust than the same thing at a smaller level? (given both use the exact same armor/materials as each other)

...And then they get slaugthered by the bugs.

Mass production brown valk wouldn't be too bad. They must be pretty cheap.

I want a variable glaug

only about 3 times. I've watched DYRL about 5 times. Plus about 6. SDF:M about 3 7 only twice. zero 3 times.

The dark elves! The enemies of the elves from macross 7. The goal is to kidnap virgin women and sacrifice them to the protodevlin in exchange for power and knowledge. I bet ranka is going to be like what mylene was in macross 7. They prick her body to see if her blood and the genes are what make her the chosen one and that allows the dark elves to open up a stargate or an ancient ruin that will allow them conquer the universe.

VF1A has the toughest hands.

Thanks for all this. I love seeing the lineart and specs together. Where's the variable glaug though?

I like that you don't have the pointy boob thing on the 19. So what are the chances they will ever do non-transforming mecha with this? (the destroid in macross zero for example?)

You go to one of those psychics/fortune tellers and they might be able to tell you if the next order of yamato toys will have fragile parts..

Really good thread. And I agree with the comment about the new exedor with tentacles looking like The Leader from the hulk. That's always what I'm reminded of when I see broccoli head. Maybe many thousands of years ago, Exedor was once a supervillain in a comic book until the PC captured him and made clones for themselves?

Yeah didn't gamlin mention how respectful he was of basara for being able to handle the vf-19 so easily and do all those fancy moves in macross 7? I seem to remember this scene because it's ironic that he is the serious military guy but still left piloting the 17 while basara is having so much fun singing and dancing inside a giant robot that is obviously superior to his and is a civilian. I wonder if the skills of the newer pilots are superior to the skills of the older generation of pilots though? I like that the full armour doesn't make the mecha look too bulky and retains that slim look. Everything is getting skinnier in the future!

Pretty cool. So the vf-171 is a cannon fodder then? Doesn't seem as menacing now as it did in macross 7 as the vf-17 Nightmare (which sounded intimidating ) Anyone piloting a vf-171 will probably die a horrible death like the brownies and vf-11 pilots. So if the vf-25 is the hero mecha, will there be something like an upgrade to that mecha like how the VF-1 got its FAST pack in SDF:M as the upgrade, I wonder? (something like a FP v2 or something?) So we got knives, beam cannon, and special powered exosuits: no sign of dr. chiba style sound weapons yet...phew!

Sounds like these are suitable for display more than holding. Sticky tack to the rescue. (is that the same as blutack?)

Eureka 7. Seriously watch it. Very smooth animation. Maybe if they ever decide to remake SDF:Macross as an alternate universe they will do it up like that?

The important thing to remember in macross though, is that humans are related in some way to aliens. So there is a little bit of us in them and a little bit of them in us. They just were exploited by their leaders more that's all. So this focus only on the "consumerism", ignores the bigger reality that these are mind controlled zombies who can't even repair something, or express an original idea due to programming/memory blocking they've been given. We DID rescue them, but consumerism isn't the hero. It's bringing them back their culture that they'd already had in their own lives but which they lost (when they were exploited) that is the 'hero'. I mean they can't even laugh or joke because it's an alien concept. Consumerism isn't the only thing. Yes you could say the the tv series focuses on "popular" culture, but in other series like macross II (yeah I know it is not canon) they also focus on some of the great achievements of humankind in the scene where hibiki takes the alien girl on a date to see all the history of human race to educate her. He didn't just say "here listen to the top 40 pop music to learn about humans", or "here drink this coke!". The anime has to appeal to a young audience so I guess the original chose cool things like kung fu movies, pop music, kids model kits and toys, minmay dolls etc to illustrate why aliens would find human culture COOL to them enough to convince the audience that it was interesting enough for them to want to leave their boring life onboard the zentradi ships. I mean they could have had a scene where the zentradi find a human library, go to a museum, an art gallery, a church, or a scientific lab onboard the SDF-1 to learn more about the humans, but that's not as cool as a minmay doll or eating some exotic food at a restaurant which they've never experienced before. Younger audiences might have not been convinced that an alien would find that exciting compared to seeing a kung fu movie, a doll, music concert, getting drunk at a party, dancing, screwing a chic etc