yellowlightman

Yeah, I think that's precisely it. This is a kit designed to match the Bandai approach vs the hardcore scale aircraft modeler audience like Hasegawa.

The more anime-style look of the battroid is great... but it only comes with stickers, right? Not waterslides?

The quality suffers, though. A lot of the Moderoid kits feel like they were designed in the 80s with a lack of poly caps and design choices (specifically the knees) that make painting more complicated than they should be. I don't mind the prices, but the design choices need to improve. (started the MADOX-01 kit a couple nights ago and got tired of it after 30 minutes or so, which is my usual Moderoid experience)

Noticed some folks on Japanese twitter have been saying preorders are also filled for the YF-19 on some shops, so might want to grab a pre-order when/where you can.

I don't remember exactly, but it was either Tamiya TS-32 Haze Gray or AS-26 Light Ghost Grey. I think the former.

Finally took some better photos of this.

It's Tamiya AS-5 Light Blue (Luftwaffe). Isn't as much of a blue eggshell color as you see in a lot of Orguss art, but I think it looks pretty good. And yeah, a lot of it doesn't quite match up. I debated using an older 1/100 or 1/72 Battroid kit to get closer to that anime/lineart proportions but it'd need a ton of work.

I've wanted to kitbash one of these for a while and have been putting aside kits for it for a while. Ended up using a 1/100 Wave Super VF-1S for the legs/arms/back, a 1/100 Wave VF-1A for the head, an old Bandai 1/100 Strike VF-1S for the fast pack, a 1/72 Orguss Tank for the shoulders, and a 1/48 Orguss Tank for the chest, pelvis, gun, and hip pods. Feet were made with styrene on top of the existing Wave kit feet. Abdomen was the knee pad from a HGUC Marasai or something. Sizes and detail on the old Orguss kits are really weird. The 1/72 kit seemed sharper and had decidedly different detail than the 1/48. The 1/48 chest was a bit too big (or too small? I honestly forget now), so I sliced it down the middle. The round piece where the UN Space kite sits was a generic Wave piece. The lineart for the Orguss-Valkyrie is kind of vague in a lot of places, so I took some liberties. The forearm missiles were swapped for generic Wave tubes because the lineart makes them look more like guns. The lower chest and pelvis in the lineart don't really match either the VF-1 or Orguss, so I just kinda make it up and tried to maintain some of the same detail (like that small detail bit on the left hand side). More generic gunpla parts used in the hip pods to better match the lineart. Used the the old Bandai 1/100 fast pack because it was easier to pair two external sides (ie with boosters) than it would have been to cut out the internal structure on the Wave parts. Briefly considered either scribing more panel lines in the older model kit parts or filling some of the panel lines in the newer Wave parts... but both of those seemed like a lot of work I didn't want to bother with. When it's all painted, isn't as noticeable as I'd thought. Haven't had the time to get better pictures done, but it turned out alright I think. Ended up using mostly Tamiya rattle cans for painting, Mr. Hobby Weathering Color for panel lines.

Yeah, it's odd. I contacted customer service and they said they haven't even received it yet, should get it next week. Probably smart to order off Amazon.jp.

Anyone else pre-order this from HLJ but not have their order process yet?

I know these Playmax figures have eye decals, but do they come with just one set or do they include extras?

As impressive as this build is, the quality of photos and modeling tips in this thread is staggering! Resin kits can be so different than normal plastic kits, guides like this are always awesome. Well done!

Great catch! I double-checked original Japanese text and it definitely said Toyama, so that mistake was on our end. I've fixed it in the article. Thanks for letting me know!

I recently published a translated version of Kawamori's interview in the This is Animation: Macross Plus Movie Edition book on Zimmerit.moe: http://www.zimmerit.moe/macross-plus-shoji-kawamori-interview/ AFAIK, this hasn't been translated into English prior. It includes some interesting insight into the creative process of Macross Plus (and 7) and Kawamori's thoughts on... Robocop.

There's one on Yahoo Auctions right now: https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/l517280346

Thanks! Unfortunately, this kit doesn't include any handheld gunpods. Not sure if it's worth it to try and scratchbuild one from one of the wing hardpoint gunpods it does include, though. Yup! I ended up pushing them in a bit more. Still rough around the edges but it's coming together. The studs on the shoulders and knees had a lot of air bubbles so I removed them entirely and replaced them with 2mm brass rod. The detail on the inner legs was lacking, with a couple of recessed areas where the Metal Siren's "missile pods" pop out. Unfortunately, both legs had massive mold lines running through them and rather than trying to salvage the detail I decided to fill, sand, and add similar detail with plastic sheet instead. The lineart is vague enough to not really show if they're recessed or not, and having them stick out a bit made more sense to me. The vents near the knees were a mess, so I just replaced them with generic aftermarket vernier parts. At this point, I still need to sort out the hands (the fists included in the kit aren't great but I don't have anything else similarly sized to replace them with) and the entire backpack and wings situation. Once those are done I'll be hitting it with some primer to see what else needs to get cleaned up.

Funny you mention that, I actually ended up switching over the elbow joints to that style of joint since they fit into the recesses of the forearms and (as you mentioned) offered better mobility. Excuse the bad picture, it's late and I didn't feel like setting up lighting for a better one. I ended up cutting back the shoulders a bit and added a polycap to the neck, though it doesn't really need one. I ended up using a bigger joint that I would have preferred for the hips to support all that weight, but I'll likely sink those in a bit more to reduce the bow-legged look. I'm also not thrilled with the knees and I'm thinking I'll end up cutting notches into the thighs to sink those in.

I'm a big fan of Macross II despite all of its (numerous) faults and I'm a big fan of old garage kits despite their (numerous) faults, but the old B-Club 1/100 Macross II kits really aren't great. They're from that era riiiiight before you started to see polycaps in a lot of mecha kits and the result was some pretty awkward posing that didn't quite reflect the dynamic poses you see in the anime itself. I mean, come on: Anyways, I've got one of the B-Club Metal Siren kits and recently started thinking it might be a worthwhile project if I tried to add some polycaps to give it a bit more movement. Granted, I'm not hoping for a full range of movement or anything resembling modern standards of poseability, but ideally I'd like to find a little flexibility so that it doesn't look quite so rigid (and adding polycaps might help "stretch" out the arms and legs a bit and keep it from looking so stumpy, check out the legs in the VF-2J kit above -- they all look like that). Oh, and I've never done anything quite like this before so who knows how it'll go. I began with the shoulders because that seemed to be the easiest place to start. Thankfully the design of this kit is such that for most joints, it's designed with a deep concave area on one part and a long protruding piece that fits into it. In theory that gives the builder a bit of flexibility with how they drill and pin the pieces together, but it's not quite what I want to do. The upside is that with a bit of cutting it should give me enough ample space to put in some polycaps. This won't be true for all joints on the kit, but definitely is for the shoulder and elbow joints. I'm using a bit of wall adhesive to keep the polycaps in place, which is also why the elbow joint doesn't fit quite as snugly into the forearm as it will when I'm finally ready to glue everything together. Unfortunately, ball joint pieces aren't going to give great flexibility for shoulder and elbow movement, but any other type of polycap joint would require some serious cutting. It'll do. Here you can see what the joints look like at the kit originally was designed. The polycaps definitely don't sit quite as flush, but I think once there's some paint on everything they'll be harder to spot.

It's not that strange. L-Gaim was a Nippon Sunrise show so Bandai likely holds all licensing rights to it. FSS would require working with Mamoru Nagano and (possibly?) Newtype magazine publisher Kadokawa for rights. I don't keep up with FSS much, but I believe it also just went through a substantial retcon to bring the designs more in-line with Nagano's Gothicmade.

Huh. I ordered mine from HLJ and they told me they weren't able to get replacement parts and the item was discontinued so I could ship the whole thing back for a full refund or keep it as-is for a partial credit refund. I opted for the second option because worst case it won't be *that* hard to modify the piece to fit.

Huh. I ordered mine from HLJ and they told me they weren't able to get replacement parts and the item was discontinued so I could ship the whole thing back for a full refund or keep it as-is for a partial credit refund. I opted for the second option because worst case it won't be *that* hard to modify the piece to fit.

I also ended up with two left side leg armor attachment pieces (and a miscast, partially unpainted gunpod, but whatever) on my Hikaru 1A. I'm not able to get a replacement attachment piece from the shop where I purchased it, so if anyone ended up with two right side pieces and wants to do an exchange shoot me a PM!

They actually just released a new expansion this week with a massive Pacific island: https://arma3.com/tanoa

Someone linked these earlier in the thread, but the Sankei 1/80 scale papercraft models should be pretty close to perfect for HMR dioramas: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/search?typ1_c=104&cat=rail&sold=0&state=0&sortid=0&target=maker&searchkey=Sankei&spage=1&Scale=1%2f80 Depending on size, you could probably also use HO-scale train buildings (1/87) or 20mm tabletop game terrain (1/72).

Recently posted this on my new-ish blog, zimmerit, and thought it might be of interest to you guys on MW. It's an interview with Noboru Ishiguro (Orguss), Katsuhisa Yamada (MOSPEADA) and Ryousuke Takahashi (VOTOMS) that took place in 1984, shortly after all three TV shows wrapped up. GOODBYE, SOLDIERS: DIRECTOR’S ROUNDTABLE WITH ISHIGURO, TAKAHASHI AND YAMADA