PointBlankSniper

The lessening canopy tint on some of these revivals makes me a little sad. It's supposed to be part of the unit's distinct color scheme, and more canon than all the "no step" warnings all over the wing. It looks like the nose sensors have lost color along with it too. Here's to hoping the joints aren't floppy at least before the armor goes on lol. Gonna have to decide if I wan't to warehouse mine and wait for other items, depending on if it somehow is still light enough for air small packet.

Who's ready for a new round of Bandai QC?

Could it be, a 4 armed valkyrie? Missed opportunity not having Guld "meditate" behind Isamu though lol

Bandai's quality knows no bounds...

Release date is 2 posts above you

They were part of the Super Minipla line. Technically, those are candy toys, which are more akin to kinder surprise at face value. But unlike those litteral plastic wastes, SMP is positioned as an animation accurate adult nostalgia model kit collector line, with a single piece of gum or candy to pretend there is any candy element to it at all. The franchises they make kits for in that line are forgotten unobtainium. They reach far back to forgotten or unheard of mechas, even more obscure than the likes of scrapped voltrons, and sentai combiner planes before megazords were a thing. These things are scalped as badly as DX. The fembots I refered to in particular are from the GaoGaiGar OVA. They never got toys like the rest of the bots from the show, and they are probably far less known, since the OVA they debuted in was a much later produced mini sequel. They were released as a P-Bandai set to really squeeze those wallets of the few fans. Bandai knows how to do that obscure low volume stuff if they actually feel like it.

Bandai has done Kouryu and Anryu in candy toy before. They are just as fembot and transformable, and as partsforming as the DX YF-21. They are willing to sell funky fembots if there are enough fans willing to throw money at them for the sake of completion. I'm sure bandai will make the MAXL whether anyone asked for it or not, and it won't even need to look good in any form even with partsforming, while it comes out 10 years late. 🙃 As a bonus that is on topic, this popped up while I was looking at how screwed up the MAXL is. I don't know how official this is, but now we can assume the leg super parts straight up just swallows the whole wing root and hides any jank.

Got it back into fighter and high speed, with fast pack. Once again I'm reminded that the arm transformations are not even theoretically possible with the fast packs mounted on the stabilizers. For such a small piece, it's absurd how they managed to overlook this and do worse than the 31's oversized and all colliding armored parts in that department. In fact, I had even misread the instructions on that and proved it was physically possible to end up with the dorsal guns incorrectly pointed foreward in fighter mode without a partial mission pack transformation, making it more practical than it is in canon. Back to the 21, putting the legs in that engine shell was not fun. I think I figured out that if the upper knee joint is straight, it will cause the calf to bulge out at an angle, and probably was the cause of all sorts of misalignment for the panels in the discussion above. In the end, I found that with the upper knee forward 1 click, and having the hips and lower knee compensate to get a slight arch against the belly plate, it resulted in much better fitment for the panels. Somehow I got one of the longer arm cannons to pop out twice, or both consecutively once each, but only one has issues, can't remember which side the first time was. It seems that once you break the glue, those things might not have friction at all, and could just rattle its way out from being looked at. I put some crafting glue on, hoping for a non permanent/damaging fix. Did the same to the loose ailerons back when it was in a battroid, and think I forgot to mention the back pack kind of looked closer to line art proportions for the battroid to have them off. I wonder if that was the intention... The cockpit to cowl tabs really didn't seem to catch anything, as I had it from out of box. I thought I fixed it when it latched while it wasn't fully transformed, but after completing transformation, the detent disappeared again. The nose sagged when breathed on, although it could almost hold if left alone. After some more messing around with the neck tab, the detent is kind of back again... Idk what's up with that spot lol. Forgot to try fighter without the lock pin after knowing how tight the legs are in that shell, but I don't feel like opening and refitting the panels again atm. Maybe I'll try it out for a bit, right before I put it to gerwalk again for long term display

Wotafa just released cam footage someone sent him of the Tamashii nation event. Not that there's anything new to see, but if anyone wants to stare at it in a pan by motion... There's also footage of the 27sp and 25 tornado. I'm too lazy to spam repost of the vid lol

That reminds me of the art style jumpscare with the new aquarion. Now we have one more thing to worry about with the new macross... It's kind of early for premium toys of a new series though. Usually these things show up late into the show, or even years after airing. Right now, we don't even have a broadcast date. The mecha and equipment designs could literally change right up to the last minute just before the episode it debuts in actually airs lol.

The trailing edge near the wing root is a totally different shape on the Kai, than the flattened edge on the YF. It can't even pretend to have a high speed mode, or that rear corner would dig into the legs way deeper than the YF. That shallow backward sweep with VF-1 super parts might work though, because the root of the stabilizers can cover the rear half of the gap formed from the corner digging in, while the front half could be filled with w/e is normally hidden and overlapped by the stabilizer and wing root. The super parts could also block some of the view. The Blazer valks straight up have a bend built into the wing, so there isn't even a way to get rid of the angle that comes mid wing. Anyway, this is still in vaporware status, so wallet and FOMO are still at peace

I feel like these aren't even preproduction units for the revival. They probably just pulled an old revival out of storage for display, and blasted it with some semigloss. It's still undated and unpriced, so it's still pseudo vaporware like the fire valkyrie. At this point, they might not even have looked into whether they want to redesign anything yet. I'll keep huffing my hopium until the last moment, and pretend all the moaning will inspire them to make a couple tweaks lmao. Anyway, wallet is still safe for now.

For the hand stowage issue, I kind of had it from out of box since YYK did an inspection. I tried to fix it but made it worse, before kind of actually fixing it, but can't be sure I really had it right because of all the other slop. The things I vaguely remember trying are tucking the thumb under the palm and index finger, as opposed to a true open palm. That seemed to help clear the little swiveling piece in the side panel, and w/e else is bulging from the leg and bottom engine panels. I think that swiveling piece in the panel also isn't supposed to go fully rotated in. There's no proper stopping point, but I think if you go to the end of its rotation, it wedges under the double jointed swing out arm for the panel, blocking it's full closing motion. Hope that helps. That swing arm also kind of catches on to the collapsed bottom engine panels in delimiter mode, when you don't get the panel angles perfect. It's kind of weird how a swing arm that seems to have the most open storage space on the whole toy catches on so many things, and it's so hard to notice it too.

The first 3 releases were all on bad fitment and warped arm gun rng. All 3 of them had a chance of any of the issues. I think the re-release of hayate's AX that came afterward fixed all the random nightmare fitment issues, but it still kept the new wing root/arm gaps with misaligned tampo, and the canopy/fuselage fuselage gap inherited from the 31 that got worse.

Just got it to delimiter mode. Popped the legs out, checked the instuctins for the arms to find the disconnecting point. Too lazy for instructions and just went back to the fighter shell blind with only a vague understanding of the mechanisms from going into battroid from days ago. Dunno what gaps you may have, but I think the most confusing part going blind is the intakes. You gotta wiggle them in any and all directions while straightening the fuselage. But then you can't forget about that hump between the cowl and air brake that needs to thread through the collar. The neck is on a really stiff S bend with a fat neck tab that I complained about before. It needs to pull back properly for the tab to clear the back of the cockpit. I'm not even sure where the correct stopping point of pulling the cowl back is. My cockpit tabs back into it very weakly too, and IDK if its because that tab is still touching and pushing it out. The engines have 2 stages of telescoping. Once over the back surface, and then another for the round humps to get out of the engine blocks. Don't forget to unsink the engine humps from the middle of the blocks. Then theres the 1 click of unsinking the underside to get the lock pin back in. Anyway, back to my own scheduled complaining. I tried to skip the lock pin for delimiter, but it just gets pressed in with how stiff the delimiter tub's connections are. Also had to check what funny angles the engine panels had to be at to let the engine panel area of the tub seat in. TBH, knowing what delimiter mode is, seeing it fill so much space feels so wrong. I thought I would have felt better about the toy seeing one form look kind of good, but I really didn't. As a depiction of a barebones form, the size of partsforming required to reach it, kind of makes it disappointing. Once again, I also gotta complain about how a chunk of the tub is there to replace most of the shape that is already there under it... And the lock pin really didn't need to exist. A rotating block could have been on one side and held the height of the gap, and then rolled a shorter face towards the other side to allow collapsing. I also played with the landing gears again. The rear gears are even more frustrating than I thought. It's encased in a way that has protrusions to block any sort of imagined solution to their lack of length. You absolutely need to rotate it in that needless inward facing orientation when there is room to just not spin it if that hadn't blocked it off with a weird bump. It even blocks the animation accurate orientation with that thick door and fake struts when they absolutely had the space for it. I have seen a clip of what is probably its first takeoff, so I know the wheel hub faces down.

Bruh... I am now hoping with all my might that the sunrise macross doesn't look like panty & stocking...

I honestly think 1/48 is a bad idea with how much bigger and pokier later valks are. It could probably sever some body parts if you dropped it.

The YF has canards, engine top stabilizers, engine bottom fins, variable wings that sweep forward or tuck backwards all the way to being longitudinal against the engine, and the area above the intake gets a corner that closely tapers back to the fuselage. The outer calf stores a single missle. The basic VF-19A is this in different paint. For the purpose of this topic, it's basically not the VF everyone is refering to. The VF-19E/F Advanced from frontier is just a clone of this with a new canopy and VF-25's super part's booster. The VF everyone speaks of are all the other suffix models. It has no canards, stabilizers are mounted on a panel that wraps down the side of the engine and reaches to where the fin itself sits on top of the wing, no engine bottom fins, "fixed" wings (still hinged for transformation) that comes out backwards partway before angling into built in forward sweep, and additional has ankle guards. The outer calf stores a set of micro missiles. The area above the intake stretches all the way behind the canopy and follows the edge of the wing root without transitioning into any sharp angles. All the squadron paints are done on this. The limbs and shields between the two are basically all different as well. The general difference in those parts is that the YF is more blocky and trapezoidal while the VF is rounded and bulbous. Essentially, the two only share the front half of the fuselage, which is basically the core torso, and. I think gunpod. Maybe the thruster nozzle/feet, I'm not sure. The Kai/Basara Custom/Fire Valkyrie is kind of a frankenstein between the two. It's the VF as the base, but it has the canards. The wings are variable, but I don't think it's actually the same geometry as the YF. It has VF style stabilizer sitting over it. It also has a custom gunpod, for those speaker things Basara shoots. The Nothung is that heavily altered blue one above. I think its some hobby magazine custom build for some side story stuff.

You are giving me too much credit. I'm not qualified or skilled in anything. I'm just a pedantic critic, and bandai's negligence on so many fronts is triggering all my 'tisms lol For the collar, I get that there is supposed to be a slight incline, but I think bandai has way gone too far. With how deep towards that back the collar stretches, it just looks like there is that much more of a slope. Then the top of the backpack towers over the battroid's hood, when it should be lower than the hood. Maybe my desk height and eye level gives me a view that makes the worst of it. I'll admit I actually think the art accurate fighter nose length is a bit goofy, so whatever bandai did for fighter nose is actually fine to me. It's just that in principle, since they went through with all the changes just to have the fat calves, they should have commited all the way and gone for the correct battroid torso length. The same holds true for the thigh to knee sections. Ignoring the torso, if you just compare how low the knee cap ends on the DX, to where it is in the anime art in that anymoon image, you will see that the fat calves did not get the correct length of accompanying shins because the thighs took up all the height. Anyway, as I said, I'm not skilled in anything, so there is no big project. I'll try to depict my idea sometime, either in text, or very crudely edited images in MS paint. I should add that I've even thought of a way to shorten the nose even more than yamato. There is definitely mix and matching from bandai and yamato's designs, and even some cheating in how the line art is interpreted, but I don't think the results will irk anyone. There might even be a side effect of having room for chunkier forearms, but that is gonna be hard to verify. Maybe if I make enough sense, someone else can make something of it all. First, I still need to get the DX into delimiter mode and high speed mode at least once, so I have a grasp on all the features before I go on and speak of fancy ideas out the bum.

I first got the Max YF-29 from preorder madness and don't rembember it having ratcheting hips. I remember when I went back to collect Mirage's AX from mandarake second, I noted to myself that I finally got to experience the fabled ratcheting hips that everyone wanted to be backported to old releases, that Max's 29 didn't have. I don't want to fiddle with my unit to check, but I've now just checked wotafa's review of Max's 29, and neither saw nor heard ratcheting when he moved the hips. I just checked anymoon, and the chest ratchet was documented as a change since Alto's YF-29 full set pack. And I also agree with his review that the ratcheting points are so far apart that they serve little purpose. He also mentions the move from one hip screw to three hip screws, but still no sign of any ratchets there. Jenius doesn't seem to have a Max review at all, so it's not even possible to conflate which unit he found the feature on. Anyway, the VF-25's hips have been documented to cause increasing ire from the anniversary version, to Alto's revival, to Michael's revival. I've seen complaints even on japanese twitter accompanied by the flood of stock and price drop on mandarake, especially for the latter unit. It's true that the 25 just got the chest ratchet and the 3 hip screws on these WWM/revival line, but those do not appear to bet new to the 29. Max preceeding the revivals, just adds a data point to how those three screw hips are decreasingly helpful. It just makes things more worrying for the 27, if the internal joints are from the same molds, since there's still the Armored Ozma and Tornado Alto production runs to get through. The only copuim fueled saving grace is that Michael's unit's reputation got so bad, and knowing how heavy Ozma's armored parts are, it could have forced bandai to finally tighten their molds up. But that is very wishful thinking, despite having Ozma's unit preordered myself.

I've now gotten around to putting it into battroid. As someone who still hasn't watched the anime, and only seen screenshots and toy depictions, this still seems very off to me. The thing has got way too much thigh, thigh ring, and knee, just for the sake of staying in proportion with the nose cone, which itself is way too long for the mode. Ignoring the proportions for a moment, I almost feel like some of the tabs were designed out of pure spite, malice, or mental illness. The backpack to collar plate, and then the collar plate to nape connections, both use a pair of micro pegs each. Tthey don't seem to have any significant latching bumps on them. Just why? There's enough material behind them to continue the shape into mega big latching tabs that could have outright deleted any hint of needing a brace. Instead, the made micro pegs that won't hold. The neck to chest tab on the other hand, demonstrates they are willing to make such mega fat tabs. Except, over at the neck, it just gets in the way of transformation. The rear neck joint was tight as can be for me. The tab was so thick that I couldn't cheat a little with flex and let it guide itself in. The whole setup resulting in needing to wrangle the neck joint with the head popped off, so I could properly extend it all the way for the tab to clear the chest slot. Back to the proportions. The angle of the intakes and collar are very wrong when with all the correct connections and brace in place. It's way too high in the back, causing a steep slope towards the front. It seems way more anime and line art accurate to just let the back sag and flop as it pleases without being connected. This whole thing just adds to the number of derranged design decisions. From what I can tell, if they didnt have so much thigh length, they could have shaved that length from fighter mode. That would allow the leading edge of the wings to come in at a more perpendicular angle and be more proportionate to line art. Shortening that section would also mean cutting down the absurdly large collar plate for battroid. That would cause the nose cone to proportionately become longer compared to the rest of the plane, without actually being altered. That section including wings being longitudinally shorter should also mean lighter, stiffer, and less torque for gerwalk to keep from wanting to split open at the battroid joints. The best I can say so far is, in a vacuum, this toy functions as "intended" by bandai's designers. I still have to try delimiter mode for a complete judgement I guess. And I forgot to swoosh in the proper high speed mode after being obstructed by trying to do it with the fast packs on. Contemplating transforming the YF-19 to see how they match up in the same forms too, but it feels like a lot of work. At this point, I think I've pretty much given enough ideas to make this to way more anime and art accurate than bandai, simultaneously in all 3 forms. I haven't even spilled my solution for keeping close to the canonical leg transformation while still leaving the engine space alone and not cheating with it as a hollow shell lol

Yeah, I get that I made a lazy absolute statement that's technically untrue, but these changes have so far had negligible effect, while they skimped on truly making improvements. The effect of the chest lock is allegedly intangible, while the hip changes, including the extra screws, seem have done nothing as well. The hips instead are said to have even become worse, possibly because of the old parts having worn out molds. The 25G revival hasn't been selling very fast after so many rounds of this. It's possible they do change something, but I think it's best to expect that possibility low, and the effectiveness of it even lower, if it actually happens. They had the chance to rework the parts forming bits of the super parts, and braced the wings with integrated solutions in preparation for the tornado parts, but that doesn't see to have happened. I don't expect the 27 will get extra care after seeing that. IDK if the 27 shares stuff like hip parts with the 25s, but I'm hoping it doesn't inherit the new jiggly hips. Considering the trend of their efforts in quality and design, I think it's already asking for a lot that these revivals and WWM releases come out no worse than the originals, plus matte coating, despite the chance of "improvements" lol.

It's highly unlikely that they change anything, given the track record of these revivals. That means it's probably gonna have parts that are older than the renewals, like the tornado, since both of these recycled the original release's parts for their renewals.

Mine has finally come in, somehow unopened, even after YYK did an inspection. I guess the only explanation is that those circular seal tapes are applied by retailers. Everything seems to be in spec as expected, since it was inspected. They put it back together fairly well. Just some minor gaps on one belly plate that seem to need a full transformation to fix, but nothing too far out of ordinary from the usual out of the box slop. I've only gotten around to putting it in gerwalk so far. I can't believe after all my efforts at snorting coping, writing off the lock pin and brace as unnecessary, pretending gunpods are landing skis, etc, my delusions of a perfect transformation were dashed by the fast pack's arm pieces. There is just no way to slide the stabilizers forward with those things on, or even just bank them inward to achieve high speed mode. The killer move is that to open the hand covers, you need to fold the rudders, which automatically ejects the fast pack bits no matter what. 😭 If they had just reused those rotating pylon mounts from the Lil Drakens and Super Ghosts, none of this would be a problem. The packs could rotate out of the way for all the transformations, and they wouldn't even need to create a new mold for that peice. A bonus would be that the stabilizer fins could accept other pylon weapons, for added play value, if they ever made any missiles available. 🤡 The uncleaned sprue marks are also indeed kind of horrifying on the exposed top edges of those parts. Anyway, enough of those fast pack arm parts. My transformable gunpods seem to hold fine in the belly packs. Due to the initial slop, one of the landing gears even reached the floor with the pack and real gunpod mounted. I couldn't tell where the slop really came from, but it almost felt like the correct amount of slop on both sides would already have been enough to solve the miserable landing gears. The whole thing feels almost as heavy as the Armored Kairos Plus, while the stand is kind of jiggly for me. Not that it's an issue for me yet. Will have to see if that hurts battroid a whole lot. All in all, it's still generally a decent toy that holds together if you ignore the very derranged design choices. The only real "unintended" issues I have from playing so far are the shoulders unseating from the intakes too easily, and the usual hand tabs wanting to eject weapons, as with most toys and model kits. A pleasant surprise that I have discovered is that the the random air brake gimmick actually makes the gerwalk reverse thrust pose look a dozen times more aggressive from some angles. I'm starting to think these toys should just be covered in moving wing flaps and brakes if for no other reason than making gerwalk look a lot cooler.

That is one fancy "Hello World" lol