kajnrig

I managed to source a viewing, and I made it roughly halfway through before calling it quits. I might finish it, but boy, do I just not care. At all. I am so ready to move on from Delta, or at least whichever creative voices are responsible for Delta.

I had really hoped that this movie would learn from the ample criticism leveled at the show and first movie and discard all excess baggage to hone in on executing the fundamentals. But the first hour of it is just more of the same. There's like twelve movies/shows/OVAs' worth of workable ideas stuffed into this, and it focuses on absolutely none of them. I can't even get excited at the introduction of nostalgia trap Max Jenius when it's just one more of a mass of hastily-introduced plot developments.

The only positive of the film is the Yami Q-Ray music, and that's not nearly good enough to save the film.

3 hours ago, Darth Mingus said:

You can get much better looking 3d printed or resin version for $5.  I like that they are expanding the line, but the softness of the mold is embarrassing.

Yep. If the head crest is the only new thing this release brings to the table - which it seems it is - then they've taken a pretty weak jab at it. It's not even a matter of material choice; Bandai have shown they can get super fine, super crisp detail out of their regular IP technology. If they were gonna spend the money on the tooling, they may as well have made it look, y'know, good, instead of like a saggy, octogenarian face hugger.

One source for those resin head crests, if they interest you. (IIRC there are more than the ones listed here, but this was just from a quick glance.)

Hazenthley "Goddess Antenna": https://www.shop2000.com.tw/GK-M/product/p36102882

Woundwort "Goddess Antenna": https://www.shop2000.com.tw/GK-M/product/p36102883

Woundwort "Goddess Antenna" (but sharp): https://www.shop2000.com.tw/GK-M/product/p33913385

There's also one for the MG Wing Zero Custom Ver Ka: https://www.shop2000.com.tw/GK-M/product/p42274191

20 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:

$5? Nice! Is that thru eBay? And you can just basically buy the psycho-blade part only?

Is the "psycho blade" the head antenna? If so, yes. I haven't seen any of the above links on Ebay, unfortunately. You might try Yahoo Japan...?

If the "psycho blade" refers to something else in the pictures, I'm not seeing what it is...

Watched the prologue and first episode today. Honestly, what hooked me was the vague murmurings of a whisper of a promise of the yuriest Gundam yuri to ever yuri.

The prologue gave me huge Stargazer vibes, except it was cramming an already lean-as-can-be 45-minute script into less than half that time. Things were happening too fast to be very emotionally affecting. It felt almost clinical, watching it.

The first episode proper is one heck of a mood swing: From typical Gundam sanctimony to bubble-gum moe space high school anime. You can feel the not insignificant influence of a certain Macross 25th anniversary TV show here... as well as Revolutionary Girl Utena, unexpectedly enough. The pacing continued to leave little room to breathe, and at the very end of the episode the show suddenly introduced yuri rom-com and battle high school to the dozen spinning plates it's already having trouble balancing.

Production values are high, and combat animation is beautiful, even if the show doesn't really do anything new with it. You've got your beam rifles, your sabers, your remote-controlled Bits and tracking missiles, and they're all used and shot and framed pretty much exactly how you'd expect them to be. Honestly, not a lot about the show has hooked me so far. The MC is adorable, but I don't think my desire to see her succeed in life will sustain my interest in the long run. But we'll see. Let's give it a few more episodes to really get a solid idea what we're working with and where we're going.

Kappa Hobby, $252.88

https://www.kappahobby.com/products/dx-chogokin-vf-25f-super-messiah-valkyrie-alto-saotome-custom-revival-ver

Since BBTS is the only US retailer selling this, is it fair to say this is NOT a WWM release? I keep waiting on some other mainstay stores to list it and keep seeing nothing.

EDIT:

Well fudge me.

https://www.kappahobby.com/products/dx-chogokin-vf-25f-super-messiah-valkyrie-alto-saotome-custom-revival-ver

8 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I think that actually would be the best solution, a complete foot replacement for fighter mode.  I can appreciate the animation accuracy for battroid, and the bigger proportions, but nothing about that works even slightly for fighter mode.

Obviously, the solution here is to just get the Hasegawa alongside this one.

Yeah, I can't say I'm a fan of the character design, either. But at the very least it's in line with the rest of the non-copyrighted VFG designs.🤷‍♂️

4 hours ago, Big s said:

They still have an issue with allowing other sites to sell their kits outside of Japan. That’s really the main issue here.

...

Bandai doesn’t Allow sellers to even sell gundam kits outside of Japan unless they have an American website like hlj and amiami.

I'd really like to know the details of their new rules for sellers like HLJ (and previously, Amiami/Hobbysearch/etc.), stores that service the international market but are based in Japan, because I was under the impression that Bandai's main decree was to keep per-order quantities to a minimum, ie to keep Japanese stock circulating mainly throughout Japan. It makes sense for them, in order to get "clean" sales/demand numbers for those expanding markets. I didn't realize it was necessary to have American websites or whatnot.

I still suspect that HG licensing fees are the bigger reason we're not seeing this in US stores at the moment. I wonder, if we contacted both HLJ and Bandai, would we be able to get them to lift their current distribution limits for just this one item specifically...?  If they just would like to stick it to HG rather than pay whatever licensing fee they're demanding, I am completely here for it... but I WOULD like some more YF-19 plz n thx u.

14 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Ok... I have no idea what I'm even looking at anymore..

Still good for a monster (or two, depending on price), but I have no idea what they're doing at this point.  Are they making Ranka dolls to pair with the valk?

Yeah, I had to do a double-take as well. From what I can suss out...

1) A new VFG VF-25F that comes with under-wing speaker pods and Ranka Lee in her Galia IV concert outfit

2) A standalone Ranka kit that includes two costumes (school uniform, Nyan-Nyan restaurant uniform) and various hand-held instruments; alternatively, might be an accessory kit to go with the previously-released and/or aforementioned VF-25F Ranka kit?

3) A Frontier-themed LED spotlight?

4) The previously-shown VFG Monster kit, with illustrations of what the Girl half of the VFG will look like

5) Standalone Walkure versions of the Girl, highlighting Makina Nakajima as the first to be released among the lot

I'm curious how this will compare to their old YF-29 fighter mode kits, proportions-wise. I also wonder if they'll release "itasha" versions of this that include updated markings that mirror those older kits.

Is HLJ really the only place right now that's taking preorders? And with such a strict order limit, too... I had hoped that the "cessation of hostilities" between Big West, Tatsunoko, and Harmony Gold would allow for more merchandise to relatively easily make it to international markets, but it seems that's not the case. Or maybe international stores are just opening up preorders later? Maybe this is due to Bandai's ongoing production limitations? Egh... Whatever the case may be, here's hoping whatever wheels need greasing get greased.

If the recently-announced YF-29 kit gets a broader release than the YF-19, one can probably assume that the major issue holding back the YF-19 was the longstanding Tatsunoko/HG rights/licenses and not so much any production or logistics problems...

What a bummer.

Yep, it's just not gonna look all that great in Fighter mode. Aside from the gap, the size of the feet are way too big for Fighter mode. There's no helping it aside from replacing them entirely (which the engineering suggests will be easy enough to do, to be fair). And if you're going to replace the feet, you may as well get rid of the unsightly hinges on the tail fins as well... and slim down the legs and arms... and scale down the shoulders slightly... and make the wings bigger... You know what, I think I'll just leave it in battroid mode. 

Ooh, that's quite nice. Very much how I would have liked the RE/100 model kit to look like. I really like the sculpt of the arms and shoulders in particular.

3 hours ago, Shawn said:

Does this mean they are re-releasing the Plus bluray too?
My phone can't get a good enough capture for translation.

I think the advert says a 40th anniversary OVA + movie Bluray and DVD will go on sale 9/28. Along the left it indicates Amazon Prime streaming begins October 3? I'm assuming it's Japanese market, not the US/UK releases that were announced this summer and have yet to get firm release dates.

3 hours ago, Shawn said:

Also, any MWW logo action anywhere? Is this new YF-19 going to be available at my local K-Mart?

Might be a bit of a toss-up, that. You see more and more Bandai kits in local stores nowadays, but it seems there's still some sort of legal snafu keeping OG Macross from making it here. Probably HG will demand that it be rebranded "Robotech" on the box art or... something.

49 minutes ago, Big s said:

Damn I misread that earlier and got excited thinking it came with waterslide decals. Well, at least they’re already planning on releasing them just wish bandai would include them

They included waterslides AND stickers with their Frontier and Delta kits. Come on, Bandai...

They went about it basically how I expected them to do. Focus on battroid mode, Gerwalk looks slightly funky, Fighter looks very funky.

I still would have preferred just three standalone renditions, but I'd be lying if I said my interest hasn't been piqued...

So Japan is getting another Frontier BD box set release, set for March 24, 2023: https://natalie.mu/comic/news/495389

Does anyone happen to know if this is related to the US/international releases of Frontier/Plus/7/etc.? Or do all of these still remain frustratingly unknown?

What's the in-universe history behind that scheme? IIRC it's to commemorate the 5,000th VF-1 unit produced?

4 hours ago, hachi said:

 

Thanks, I haven't been ordering much lately (or since the pandemic hit, actually) so I didn't notice. Who's the most reliable seller nowadays?

From my experience, EVERYONE is having trouble being "reliable" nowadays. And this isn't necessarily a pandemic thing; Bandai were already cutting back on their allocations of product to vendors prior to the pandemic. They were expanding their customer base to international markets and making increasingly varied products, without substantially boosting their production capability (ie still making everything out of their Shizuoka facilities). Production runs of X kit were probably cut back significantly so that they could retool in time for production run of the following Y kit.

HLJ for me is still by far the most reliable seller, though with Gunpla specifically, Bandai has made so many significant strides into the US market that HLJ has been rendered kind of moot... for current, new gunpla-buying purposes, anyway. I tend to go for slightly older kits, which Bandai reproduces for their domestic market more often, and which HLJ can more easily get their hands on than domestic sellers can do. For new products, USAGundamstore has been decent for me... but again, that's about as decent as someone else who regularly shops BBTS, or Amiami, or etc.

57 minutes ago, azrael said:

Apparently that 3D V-cache is holding up versus the new chips (which makes one want to wait for the 7800X3D). 🤔 So if the 5800X3D is a viable upgrade for your aging system...get that instead of the new chips.

I'm debating whether to do exactly that for my nephew's 1600AF build. Maybe wait until the new 3D vcache chips come out, see it get another good price drop, and swap it out alongside a BIOS update. It makes me slightly upset that his is the only Ryzen build in the house; the other kids' are recycled Intel computers.  One of them has even greater need of an update, but he's of the age now where he wants to work and pay for his own stuff, and he's dedicating more of his money to fixing up a car. Maybe I'll get him some parts for a Christmas gift...

3 hours ago, Hikuro said:

Agreed, there’s no real need for a reboot. Surprised anyone would touch it after The author got busted for kiddy porn.

Considering the "punishment" he received, I'm not surprised at all. Child sex abuse just isn't quite the faux pas in Japan that, say, smoking marijuana is.

Digging into DLSS 3 some more, it seems it IS basically the same type of interpolated frame generation tech that already exists - it renders two frames, then generates one or more frames that get inserted between those two frames, then outputs the result. So while strictly speaking there ARE more frames being sent to the screen, in practice the game will actually be LESS responsive as you'll always be playing one or two frames behind the real game time. I suppose that's where Nvidia Reflex comes in, as it'll presumably minimize this delay. Still, input latency and responsiveness won't actually be any better than if you played with the frame generation turned off.

I imagine in fast-paced competitive shooters players will eschew the tech, but it'll probably be nice for leisurely games like Flight Sim.

5 hours ago, azrael said:

DLSS 3.0 (exclusive to RTX 4000-series)

Aside from artificial segmentation reasons, I have to wonder if there are actual hardware reasons for the exclusivity. The "frame generation" part, which seems to be basically all that sets it apart from DLSS 2.X, seems... iffy. Frame interpolation has always been a double-edged sword; I'll be interested in seeing how it compares to other, non-AI methods, and how configurable it is (ie whether it can be turned off entirely).

5 hours ago, azrael said:

, 2x boast in rasterization, 4x performance boost with ray-tracing compared to RTX 3000-series.

Looking at some of the slides/graphs, I noticed there was a lot of typical Nvidia number-fudging to get those results. Basically, there were rarely if any actual just straight up head to head performance comparisons. The "4x performance" claim in Cyberpunk 2077 especially and immediately triggered my skepticism switches. And sure enough, when you look at the fine details you see that the base 30-series data is using DLSS 2.X performance mode versus the 40-series using the DLSS 3.0 "frame generation" interpolation.

This sort of stuff is exactly why I don't pay attention to Nvidia press releases, announcements, etc.

Yeah, if these power draw figures are anywhere near what the rumors claim, tomorrow's high-end PCs will be demanding more wattage than a frickin' microwave... running for hours on end... every single day...

From what I've heard, AMD's Radeon 7000 cards will be more focused on power efficiency, but even then their "7900 XT" or whatever it will be called will be drawing up to 400, 450 watts as well, so... I mean, I guess if it can get 85%-ish of the 4090's performance at 70% the power draw, that's certainly better than not, but still. Yikes.

Did Nvidia have anything actually interesting on show?

Came across this while perusing Metal Gear remake rumors: a Subsistence-style third person camera mod for Metal Gear Solid 2.

15 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

Watched it, its OK and the format is getting kinda old. MCU will never be on the grown up level that DCU has been.

*snort*