HardlyNever

Yeah, I know sarcrasm can be hard to convey on the internet. I was joking about the green bar thing, I'm pretty sure it just moves as a projection of estimated arrival time, not an actual indicator of status. Mine still hasn't been shipped yet, but everyone's is probably different.

Nothing here, but that green bar is so close to 発送済み... I'm not too worried yet. I've had stuff arrive from Japan in I think 3 days (maybe even 2)? Mine isn't due for delivery until Sept 30th, anyhow.

The VF-1S is kind of uncharted territory for this particular line, as it is probably the most desirable yet, especially in Japan. It also releases right before the super/strike parts do, which bumps up the hype for that release (yeah, they can work on all the valks, but we know what they'll look best on). So we don't really know. I think it is reasonable to assume some quantity will exist for sale at/near release day, but that number may be very low, and your odds of securing one then are also probably very low (competition will be high). But it is worth a shot. The mantra of this line is low expectations and be prepared to pay a mark-up.

For a pre-order or something you're trying to order now? If you're ordering now, use a vendor that has the Amazon.co.jp shipping center icon on it. That should give you international shipping as an option.

Looks like the prices are creeping up. I bought mine from etoy (the first one of those) for 22,028 yen before shipping. If you're out there still fence sitting, I'd decide either way soon.

Joined the others and went with Amazon Japan for the Max 1A. A few thousand yen mark up for something that was crazy hard to get at PO seems like a gift. I also think the Hikaru VF-1S won't be this easy on release. I'd love to be wrong, but I don't think we should assume we'll get this lucky twice.

I believe they only did a PF version, not a "regular" and PF version. And the PF version was pretty close to what they sell their "regular" super parts valks for. Just for the VT-1, though.

As long as it continues to sell. But they didn't try it with the VE-1, so maybe that's progress? Personally, I wish people would quit buying their products until they settle on one release per mold, and on something resembling a decent price. But I'm at least a little bit guilty here, too. I bought the PF SDF-1 (the only PF product I've bought from Arcadia), and I don't even regret it. Was it expensive? Yeah. Was it worth it? ...yeah. But I'm not here to tell people how they should spend their money. However, it is reminiscent of the whole "pre-order bonus" scam video game companies have been doing for years, that is entirely anti-consumer (and benefits the video game companies enormously). We'd all be better off if people stopped buying into it, but the market can't help itself. So it continues.

This PO day for the VF-1S Hikaru has already passed (it was early June). We don't know when the next one is yet. If you're trying to secure one at release, we don't know the date yet (it will just be later November). Like you're seeing with the Max, though, they kind of trickle out at various times at different vendors; there is no set time for that. Also, the "official" release date for the Max is/was Sept.21 (in Japan). But as you can see, several places will sell it early, even by Japanese time. So basically a few days before the official release date, you'll want to be checking vendor sites.

You can see it here, but it is listed as discontinued. It might come back up, but I doubt it.

There was some shenanigans at the HLJ page. The Max vf-1a was showing as in stock, and you had the option to add it to cart, but then when you did it errored out and said it was order stop. This continued for like 30 min. Now it is just listed as discontinued. I dunno whether they actually had some stock for sale at some point, or it was just a database error fighting with itself. It seems more like that latter, but maybe a few lucky people scored a Max somehow. I know I didn't That's one more option down.

The Max VF-1A is available on amazon japan in the 22-23k yen range. I'm holding out for somewhere like AmiAmi or HLJ, but I might just go with Amazon japan if I can't get one from one of those.

This is a little out of date, but most of those are pretty reliable and still in business. AmiAmi, Hobby Link Japan, Nippon Yassan, CDJapan, Anime Export tend to be pretty popular. But there are other options out there.

O... sufficientemente!

Basically the plot of Macross Zero, appropriately.

Heh, I was thinking about this exact thing earlier today. Like, if it were totally random, shouldn't we be seeing something like a normal distribution of errors? So 25% RR, 25% LL, 25% RL (right on the left side, left on the right), and 25% correct. At least something close to that. But based on what we are seeing, there are hardly any that are correct. So there must have been something systematically wrong, in the production and/or assembly process. My guess would be the assembly part, but there is no way to know. I think this lends maybe a touch of credibility to what @Slave IV said about intentionally bad production. It doesn't prove it outright, but I'm really struggling to imagine a situation in which this could be a just individual error. This has to be something systematically wrong in the production process. But I doubt we'll ever know.

Arms race:

The exhibition details are up now. HMR is listed in the event under "Robot Center!" So there is still hope:

On other releases (VF-0D and A), peoples' legs were falling off the toy, sometimes right out of the box. Arcadia did nothing. This seems a bit more widespread, but I wouldn't count on Arcadia directly doing anything, especially for international customers. You'll probably be left dealing with your particular retailer, if you get any kind of support at all.

Either way, it's pretty terrible for a $350+ product to have this kind of issue. Bandai gets so much crap for their QC and production practices, but Arcadia has similar issues, at 175% the cost. Honestly, I'm glad I skipped on this particular release. I was on the fence about the whole design and price to begin with, if I would have gotten one with a QC problem at this price, I would have lost it. And I'm fairly forgiving when it comes to minor QC issues; but at this price point they better have that stuff figured out. I still might gamble on one if it goes on steep discount, but for now, I'm steering clear.

Ehh... kind of. Running source only will give you a slight edge, but that is nothing compared to the speed a bot has. There are definitely bots buying these at split-second speeds. Anything a human can do, a bot can do as well, and faster. (Good) bots don't interact with pages waiting for them to load images and what not. They interact with the source directly, and do it faster than a human would looking at the same source. Like I said above, anything a human can do on a computer (and especially a website) you can theoretically program a bot to do. Any counter-measure you can develop, can be defeated with enough time and effort. For instance, in your example, once bot makers learn what is going on, they would just put in that amount of delay, to make their bot pass the test. It's an arms race like anything else. You can definitely take steps to make your website more bot-resistant. But as long as you want to have actual human beings go through the check-out process, you'll have an avenue for bots to take, if they are sophisticated enough. Honestly, I'm surprised we don't see more CAPTCHA used on these sites. It wouldn't completely eliminate bots, but would have a big impact, at least initially. I think the frustration to the end-user, and the the vast majority of users being... less informed... and not understanding what is actually going on and why we need to CAPTCHAs to make purchases, might be preventing it. But even with all that, you'd still have actual humans buying stuff up at high speeds. So it wouldn't really feel that different to us on pre-order night. Or you can go the lottery route, which NY seems to be doing (intentionally or not), where you just let random people in to the check out screen. This doesn't defeat bots exactly, but levels the playing field between human and bot by pushing it mostly to chance. You can still put your bots in the random queue, though.

No announcement one way or another has been made. I'm watching the exhibitions page for the October event (it isn't up yet). Hopefully, we'll get a mention of HMR there. If not, we'll have to wait until the event itself. Some people are speculating that if we don't see/hear anything at all about the line at the next event, it is dead or on indefinite hiatus. We just don't know. I doubt Bandai would outright announce that the line is discontinued, even if it were, though.

This is my experience with every Arcadia product I've ever had, except maybe the VF-1J GBP set. It's like their trademark, or something.

You can see the full line here. They haven't really done re-releases. The VF-1S Focker got sort of a double release (but not a re-release). The Regults were kind of, sort of reissued, but with new markings and accessories. Re-issues aren't really a thing with the HMR line, so I wouldn't count on it.

That is the 3rd or 4th CF vf-1a I've seen at manda in the past few months for 8k yen. I've been watching them for a while, but always end up passing, usually for something else. Be patient, and I'm sure another will show up at that price.