jenius

I'm still hoping we don't get a capitalism = evil storyline here. That's storyline is as old as capitalism itself. I'm still holding out hope that the 117th stumbled upon something and now someone is either out to discover it or bury it permanently. There are lots of issues though. Do we know if the VF-27 is also a LAI product?

yes, all fixes included. The only thing with the YF-19 that gives me a hard time these days is getting all the seams tight.

Did the queen die though or just get really ticked off? didn't the queen in Aliens get banged up and she just shed her egg making equipment?

Yeah, that goes with the: line of thinking. I'm glad it wasn't supposed to be the Global's main cannon firing 'cause that'd be strange. So, does the sleeping Birdman on Galia IV save Alto?? Something has to happen with that BirdMan after all....

Alright, so i'm rewatching it and trying to make better sense of the subs. Correct me where I'm wrong: 1) After Ranka is taken by the Vajra Brera contacts Grace to tell her of what has happened. 2) Grace says this changes the plan and that capturing Ranka will no longer be absolutely necessary. 3) Grace says that she would still like Ranka captured but if that's impossible Brera should not let it bother him. 4) I believe when Brera protests Grace says something to the effect of "While she was our major objective here, she's still a secondary objective in the grand scheme. Still, if you witness something that confirms our suspicions so much the better but don't go too far out of your way to make that happen." She ends communications with Brera by stating she's going to blow up the whole planet. What's definitely NOT said in this conversation is "what exactly is Brera's number one objective now?" since all we really know is that he's no longer required to kidnap Ranka in the process. 5) She then hops up to gain a vantage point and locates where the Dimension Eater is located on a map (either that or confirms that the Dimension Eater will kill everyone on the planet with its blast radius although at the end of the episode this would seem silly since the blast radius is practically everywhere) 6) Brera shows up in the Vajra hive complex. Since his primary objective no longer involves kdinapping Ranka; he sets about accomplishing the grander plan which I guess we can deduce was for him to cause the Vajra armada to get on the move by pissing the Vajra queen off as he comes in with guns blazing after non-chalantly drifting down. Fortunately for him, an errant shot hits a crystal and everything gets all crazy. It seems like the crystal is something the Vajra queen is really sensitive about and when she's suffering she is able to make Ranka suffer. The how of this all could go lots of ways but then all the crystals start glowing and the Global fires its main cannon. You know what might make more sense? Maybe just the Vajra mothership built into the Global fired a main cannon up and through the Global to free itself so that it could launch. 7) Grace sees the main cannon's burst and smiles saying "It has awoken" which, in context, is an odd word choice. It does make some sense if my conjecture above is right and that Grace just realized that the Vajra would need to blast the Global free if they wanted to take off so the "it" becomes the Vajra armada she would know to be taking off. Brera is now inexplicably fighting Alto with some dialogue that seems to imply Brera has a personal dislike of Alto, "You don't suit her." Maybe whatever Ranka's fate is, her having a strong love for someone could mess it up. Either that or Brera is just a homicidal prick, figures he might as well kill Alto now since Alto will probably get in the way of his kidnapping her in the future (pretty optimistic since the girl was abducted by the Vajra), or Grace told him at some point killing Alto is another objective. 9) Grace calls her dog Brera off and tells him to go back and "wait for my orders" which seems to imply she'll survive the explosion she's creating in some way. 10) Grace then has an evil monologue which tells us that her killing Sheryl (whom she assumes is in bed) and all these Zentrans will cause a tremendous amount of hate. The Zentrans hurried mayday calls will be "their" guidepost but I'm not sure if the "their" is Frontier or the Vajra. She then wishes Frontier luck so it would seem like she's saying the Vajra are going to somehow follow the mayday calls to the Frontier. Did I sum it all up right?

I think Dr Mao was a scientist and Brera and Ranka are her creations more than her children

It really isn't a big deal at all (Personally, if they're not built into the toy then I don't like them). When a Valk toy is in battroid mode there are gaps under the armpits that let you see inside the toy. In the anime those big gaps aren't there. When Yamato made their 1/48 version GBP they created the gray part in the armpit pictured below:

Yes, there seems to be a strong likelihood that Ranka and Brera are related. She's called him 'brother' a couple times and he's familiar with the song Ranka is familiar with. In the subs Brera tells Alto he's not good enough for Ranka which seems more like a brotherly defense than jealousy or hatred.

Yep, that was exactly where I was going with the supposition that LAI is involved in something fishy here. Regardless of whether or not Luca's family knows what Luca is doing on Frontier they know he's there in some capacity. Heck, they're even letting him borrow fold equipment. I would also guess that his family would be well aware of his activities with SMS. He explained in the last episode how his involvement with SMS is right up his family's alley to Leon. Now, if the next episode starts with Luca being sent away from Frontier just before the Vajra show up then I'd think that'd cement some evil LAI involvement.

I specifically looked for side covers when I was in Japan and didn't see any. Sorry guys. The one I looked at didn't have any inserts or instructions yet so I guess there's an outside chance but I'd say it's pretty doubtful.

These theories are decent but something about them just doesn't add up. Grace doesn't need to do ANYTHING to instigate a Vajra/Human conflict. All things considered, the Vajra and the humans are already at war. If all she wanted to do was to cause another battle between Frontier and the Vajra then there had to be an easier way then blowing up a whole friggin' planet. Why do the Vajra get all uppity when Ranka sings on Frontier but they don't notice her until she goes to urinate (or what have you) on Galia IV? Also, maybe I'm being a bit too logical here, but how many weapons out there can do damage in the way that Super Dimensional Bomb does? Also, are weapons of mass destruction monitored in any way? Isn't a clerk somewhere at LAI going to notice that someone checked out a planet destroying bomb and forgot to check it back in? And if LAI is in on this then why do Luca's parents hate him so much? He seems like a sweet enough kid. None of this is meant to be criticism, I must suspect we have a lot more scratching to do before we get beyond the surface.

Do you guys really think that humans are going to blame Vajra for a planet being eaten like that? Does Frontier even know that the Vajra were there? I think the closest thing that would happen to that would be "We've lost contact with this planet." "Darn, something must have happened." Now, when they start analyzing what those 'something's could have been, a likely "possible" cause would be the Vajra. I would think it'd be more likely after the insurrection that the bigwigs on Frontier would deduce there was a little mutually assured destruction on the parts of the two Zentran factions (they were toting around reaction weapons). In fact, I'd go so far as to say that that was why Grace tried to induce the battle: so that she could destroy the planet and make it seem like the conflict caused everything to be wiped out there. Besides, the humans and Zentrans already hate the Vajra, it didn't take the destruction of yet another human installation to get them really angry or something. It's good to see that humans finally figured out how to use the super dimensional bomb without merging all sorts of dimensions together and causing a super dimensional century.

In my experience, superior in every way (except selection maybe).

Looks fantastic, did they do something different with the windscreen?

If this is the same bar I was at... it is really cool... and it has cute girls to boot!

I wouldn't worry too much about the toy being either 1/48 or 1/55, since these are relatively small toys the difference in size isn't very large and the CMs Legioss and Toynami Alpha are both somewhere between the two scales... so the Gosu probably would be also.

Thanks for any input guys. Just to clarify, the company in question is NOT Toynami... it's a Japanese company.

C'mon now folks, these "exclusives" aren't something to be upset about. If you lived in Japan and did the work you would get them for about MSRP. It's not Yamato's fault they can't sell to the US and they seem to be just "having fun" with the 1/48 mold now by pumping out some low volume toys. For them they get to make a toy, have it at least break even, and not have to worry about back-stock. I don't really see anything wrong with it or the people with enough cash to pay a premium for them. It sucks that BW and HG hate each other and it keeps toys out of our hands... but that's about it.

Yes, the boots match the bike, the rest of the armor is a darker green. Beagle has it correct.

The chase is a VF-1 "Low Vis" but the paint scheme is different from the 1/48 in that it has a black line that extends from the canopy down the top of the nosecone.

I didn't mean for it to sound like I was agreeing with that whole detachable leg bit... I was just trying to paraphrase a statement that was made when the first 160s were coming out. As pointed out by others, there is some mechanism there and there definitely aren't free floating legs in transformation.

I don't catch the reference? Is Tim Eldred like an HG guy or something? I thought Zents was a neutral term but yes, my snafu on the "reaction" vs "reflex" weaponry bit.

That's all fair enough but in this instance it's the "first generation" portion of the sentence that leads to the confusion. Is there a generation of Macross ships that all look similar? Did all of those ships come to be known simply as a Macross?

We don't get a very good glimpse of it but the original Supervision Army shipped looked substantially different from the SDF-1 Macross and the sillouette we're treated to looks like a dead-ringer for the human-modified form. Basically, it seems highly unlikely it isn't a human ship, check out the bridge: Add to that the fact Alto looks at it and says "That's the Macross" and it certainly seems to be leading us to one conclusion. Of course, it wouldn't be MacF with some confusion heaped upon it. My sub version of the next episode preview calls it "A first generation Macross ship" which is wording that could imply it might not be *THE* Macross that survived the Rain of Death although there's some talk of past heroism also. The episode preview ends like this which begs the question... will that ruin end up looking shiny and new at some point in the next episode: I was also certain that that eyeball was too similar to the eyeball from MacZero and would have to be a Protoculture entity like the Bird Man but this picture Makes me wonder if it isn't just Varja related... but then again, Varja and the Bird Man may still be strongly related.

Canon = canonical as in Yamato said their toy had detachable legs because, according to them, the legs actually do detach momentarily when a VF-1 transforms as designed by Kawamori. They have since seen the light and regardless of what is *supposed* to happen with the legs, they realize that toy fans don't like parts- formers.