jenius

Wow... just watched this movie and it was horrible... just terrible. I can give it credit for two things: 1) Felt more comprehensible than the second film 2) Looked good Otherwise... ouch. My wife got up a half hour in and decided to go do dishes. She couldn't stomach Sam Witwicky's being an annoying little biscuit anymore. Seriously, watching Sam for the first thirty minutes of the film is painful. He only becomes stomach-able once his screen time is comprised of him running and ducking as stuff blows up around him. I assume the two pet autobots are supposed to be comic-relief but the only time I cracked a smile was when they said "Yeah, we gonna die." Not sure if I was smiling because they were dying or if I felt that they were going out on a good note. Remember that scene where the humans get together and climb up the glass building to shoot a rocket at the pillar? Remember how that lasts like 40 minutes before the Decepticons come and knock the building down and the whole scene's net result is essentially zero? I'm thinking there could have been a better use of that screen time (as someone noted before, seeing the Autobots get captured might have been something better to show the audience). That scene dragged on so long I felt like I was watching Skyline again. Good idea 1: let's make the main bad guy completely non-threatening by having him fall apart the whole movie. Better yet, let's make him so non-threatening that a shell-shocked blonde can stumble upon him and rather than fearing for her life, decide to strike up a mocking conversation with him. WTF? And what exactly was Megatron's plan? Did he think he and Optimus were going to shake hands after Sentinel was dead? Good idea 2: Sure, Decepticons are bad, but it'd be cooler if we symbolized how bad they were by having them spit green fluid when they talk. Good idea 3: Robots with personality are dumb. Let's make the Decepticons fairly generic looking and make sure they have no personality. To that end, let's start making them all look really insect-like. Heck, let's make one just be a giant worm with no alt mode (did I miss it?). Did anyone catch what the giant worm's alt mode was? I mean, it's not as stupid as movie 2's having Decepticons be able to perfectly recreate humans (which would end the series as we know it, replacing it with such hits as Revenge of the Body Snatchers) but a giant worm robot? All the Decepticons were getting pretty tentacle heavy as it was. It's good to have character designs so indistinguishable from each other that the audience has no idea of who was actually just killed. Question, which Decepticon had the best line in the third movie. Was it "You will die!" spoken by Megatron, Starscream, or Soundwave. There are no other options because I think that's the only sentence ever uttered in the movie by Decepticon's other than Megatron's "Oh no you didn't!" to Carly. So you might be reading this thinking "Idiot, you're thinking too much, it's a movie for kids!" I debated that a bit as I watched it. I'm guessing it's target audience is 13 year old boys by how often I was getting screen shots that made me have naughty thoughts about that Carly actress. The simplicty of the plot and it's over-reliance on action that seemed a lot like ants running from a magnifying glass might reinforce the 13 year old target demographic. There were some things that just didn't fit though. First, the lack of humor, but maybe I'm just too old now to find humor in the same things a 13 year old boy would find funny (my wife would be shocked if this is the case). Second, the violence. There were some pretty brutal human deaths in the beginning (which sadly, got me optimistic this film might not suck as bad as it seemed it was going to). Heck, an execution style murder of an Autobot was also pretty heavy. That said, the animated film was probably aimed at 13 year old boys and it didn't have a ton of humor and it definitely didn't shy away from violence.

Looks like Frankenstein in battroid mode. Needs a neck collar to elevate the head above that chest bump.

I think the only problem with your argument is that there's no collar shown in that line art... I mean, yeah, it shows there's a surface the neck is attached to but there would need to be that surface since the neck swings during transformation. In that line art the chest plate is just below the VF-1A's eye level. Where is it on a Yamato 1/60 V2 toy?

Post it, I'd like to see it. My line art resources are very limited. Another one lifted from Macross Mecha Manual, I believe this is a Kawamori drawn line art (but could be wrong). I tried to use this for my comparisons before but there's some elbow gun magic going on in that drawing.

I thought Ozma and Alto were released simultaneously in the V1s.

It's hard to reply and not sound like I'm flaming you because you're an animator but you should be aware that the animation in Macross is quite frequently quite poor, that various scenes portray the VF-1 in battroid mode looking quite differently, and the line art is official. The idea that the animators get it more right than designer is an interesting way to think outside of the box but in this case the animators were extremely inconsistent. As noted previously though, that BW sanctioned line art is not Kawamori's own although his own line art does show a recessed head and no high neck collar.

I believe member ValkyrieExchange had some bum shoulder VF-0A toys for sale fairly cheap.

Wouldn't you need to compare the first 90 minutes of Sheryl to Maia? I have no doubt she would have had very little character development and you'd still be right but the comparison as is is unfair.

I suspect the stores we've seen preorders from are simply jumping the gun. They heard from a distributor the price and release date so they took a batch of preorders to get the early converts before they had any idea on how many they'd be able to get. We'll probably see preorders open back up when shipping quantities are more clear.

I kinda wish the VF-14 was the common fighter in Frontier instead of the VF-171

Beagle line art comparison!

What's a 5000B look like? Will we get the VF-1 whale hunter customs? That'd be cool.

Based on the YF-19 exploding joints thread I think there might be some traumatic memories if they went that route!

There's an Alto hero version of the VF-171... even a Luca version.

I agree with you but the fact we got a YF-29 kinda makes me think anything is possible... although the YF-29 obviously had a lot of R&D benefit as far as a potential V2 VF-25 toy was concerned.

I would vote they leave the forearm as is and make the bottom section a bit fatter to accomodate the weaponry and make the weaponry a bit smaller.

Rumor has it he's been dead for a couple weeks, Apple just delayed announcing it until after the Iphone dropped. This rumor might just be fueled by the fact that no news article early cited the date of death.

This thread is very silly to me. "hey, what's the difference to the line art people are talking about?" "Here it is." "OMG, you are so stupid, how dare you compare a toy to the line art!" Got it.

Reivaj, your argument is a slippery slope. There's no denying the VF-19 is more expensive and very different. The argument that would be made (which is completely subjective and would undoubtedly be very rancorous) is if all the differences between the VF-19 and the VF-25 warrant the price difference. Let everyone with their wallets in hand have the debate internally. If you make it into a forum matter it just becomes another Bandai vs. Yamato pissing match.

Also because a lot of people aren't having joint problems. I only had a shoulder armor pop off once and didn't feel frustrated. The yf29 is in demand because lots of people love it... Most people don't know much about it so it's not like it's in demand because it's so iconic. edit: in traffic I remembered a couple more times the shoulder popped off. There's one really tough point for me getting back to fighter mode.

Does anyone know a good spot where I could get all the Votoms OVAs and newer shows? I would buy a legit version with English subtitles if available. If there is no legit version available and someone has them then shoot me a PM to discuss further.

Just pre-ordered mine... but I might wait to have it shipped until the VF-17 comes out... I suspect that means I'll be waiting a bit but I hope I'm wrong.

When did you become such a troll. I say "Maybe you're right" and you still feel the need to be snippy. You used to actually contribute around here.

When's the release date? I thought it was January. Maybe it is the final version. Maybe Bandai has a huge warehouse in China just full of Ozma toys waiting for whatever the release date is. Maybe they sent a couple back to Japan for marketing purposes. Maybe it's an artist's proof. Maybe it's a preproduction run. Who knows? I seem to recall hearing that this toy is due out three months from now so I'd suspect it's a preproduction run sent to Bandai so they could do some marketing and put it through the paces and then tell the factory whatever tweaks need to be made before doing the whole amount. I might be wrong. Even if I'm right, it doesn't mean Bandai will ask for any changes so ultimately it might be the same as the production run. Either way, I'm sure that particular toy is seeing a lot of action so the paint chipping isn't terribly surprising. In the end, it's a Bandai product, you're going to be able to chip the paint off of it. Usually being cautious helps reduce the likelihood (not something I would think is happening with that sample) so it's not something to freak out over... and not freaking out was the important thing.

To be clear, I said the Hi-Metal was better in ONE respect, the backpack placement and the lights by the shoulders. Here's the inevitable comparison shot: