SteveTheFish

Here are the pictures I took at the event yesterday.

I attended the show yesterday and talked with Kaneda. I tried to persuade him to make a VF-1 VFG with Misa riding it. He seems to have his mind set on the newer stuff, unfortunately. I talked with my friend Takahashi (who now works for Hobby Japan) and he agrees with my idea. Neither of us are fond of the stickers these come with. I got the first VFG kit when it came out and I never finished it because I had a problem with some stickers lifting. I'll have to paint those areas by hand, I guess. Anyhow, here are the VFG pics I took.

Unfortunately, I have not received any response for my news submission from HJ. However, I am set to attend the All-Japan Model Hobby Show next week, so if I can, I'll talk to someone there directly about this story.

I took better photos of the completed kit at last and added them to my Tumblr feed. https://stevethefishdotnet.tumblr.com/post/728572872980873216/arii-1100-macross-regult-heavy-missile-type

Yeah, the yellow sign says it has both decals and stickers, and that it comes molded in metallic silver. I guess that's what they mean by "factory edition"?

Here are my model acquisitions since May. Yes, I'm a Hasegawa fanboy.

I think my first exposure to Dirty Pair was the stupid Streamline English dubbed videos. Then later I saw some fansubs. Some of the episodes are pretty weak, but the show overall is fun. So I bought the recon pod kit on YSJ from a shop called Dejitamin I sometimes buy from. It looks like I may have bought the last one. I'm sure Hasegawa will repop it, but for the time being it's not on their schedule.

A little-known aspect of the legacy Macross models from the '80s were the figure kits. Imai made several plastic kits of the figures, but they were not very well-detailed. Tsukuda made a few figure models from that heavy plastic they used (perhaps it was ABS?). Arii made a few sofubi (soft vinyl) kits. Misa in a swimsuit, Hikaru in his flight suit, and at least three Minmay figures; schoolgirl, concert dress (TV), and this DYRL concert dress from the end of the movie. She comes in her iconic pose. At first it seems like a cool kit, but actually it is lacking. First of all, her eyes are too wide and big, resembling the TV version Minmay rather than the older, more mature Minmay from the movie. She doesn't come with earrings, her skirt is too short, and they didn't sculpt any panties. Fortunately, my good friend in America used to work as a sculptor for McFarlane toys. He gave her better eyes, he made earrings to use with fiber optics to help give them their anti-gravity attached look, and he sculpted some panties on her. I painted Minmay with V-Color vinyl paints, which are specifically made for such sofubi kits. I also went over her outfit with glow-in-the-dark, fluorescent Blue Steel Arpeggio lacquer paints by Gaia Notes. Minmay's concert dresses glow in the movies, so I wanted to capture that with this figure. I painted her eyes with Tamiya and Mr. Hobby acrylics. For these photos, I've used blacklights to make her dress glow. You can see a photoset of this build here: https://stevethefishdotnet.tumblr.com/search/minmay arii And here is the final reveal on YouTube: I do not consider this done yet. I have trusses by Plum I have constructed. My plan is to wire it up with concert lighting and have UV LEDs shining on her dress to light her up.

Do you mean vacuform? I don't have the tools to do that.

The eye decals look better than those they provided for the little figures that came with the Lovely Angel kit. I finished that earlier this year. The eyes just seem a bit off somehow, but I cannot put a finger on why exactly. https://stevethefishdotnet.tumblr.com/post/716114622462246912/hasegawa-dirty-pair-kei-yuri-1300-lovely And since you like Dirty Pair, last year I finished my 1:4 scale Kei and Yuri sofubi figures. They are BIG! Painting them was difficult since I was getting used to using V-Color vinyl paints. Yuri was a bootleg kit from Korea to boot, so her surface had too many dimples. I had to use a surfacer to fill in the dimples, and that is the problem. V-Color paints are better going directly onto vinyl, so I had a lot of paint lift off with masking tape and it drove me crazy. Kei, OTOH, was an original Fukaya and did not have such flaws. Here is a photoset for that: https://stevethefishdotnet.tumblr.com/post/680782257296916481/14-dirty-pair-kei-and-yuri-sofubi-photoset-april These links are to my Tumblr feed where I have a bunch of modeling and other nerd stuff. My prize Dirty Pair possessions are my Kei and Yuri pre-painted cold cast figures by Epoch. These are limited edition figures I bought 16 years ago. https://stevethefish.net/life/life035.htm

I just opened the Kei kit and took a picture of it for you. https://stevethefish.net/photostream/#16039252457827/16943140794097

Package from Amiami arrived this evening!

Hey, there is Kaneda! He has gray hair now. Well, apparently he is still working at Aoshima. He had a plan to produce a kit of the police spinner from Silent Mobius several years back but I imagine that plan must have been abandoned by now. I really wanna go to the All-Japan Model Hobby Show at the end of the month and see people I haven't seen in many years.

Nice!

I never noticed any cosmetic differences between the show and the movie. For the male power armor, though, it is very different. The movie version looks way better while the TV version looks clunky. This has inspired me to start working on the old Bandai repop of the Imai kit I own. I bought it over 18 years ago and all I did with it was paint the figure. Last night I did assembly on the legs and such, but I'll have to paint many of the parts separately before assembling, then do touch-up painting.

Oh man... I am so tempted to attend the All-Japan show. I haven't been there in years, especially because of the mask requirements. Now that that's over, I'd like to attend again. I'd have to take a Friday off from work though to attend on press day.

Last night I started working on this old kit. The decals have aged poorly and they maybe unusable. My plan is to use my sheet of Autobot decals and build it as Jetfire from Transformers. I don't forsee spending a ton of time on this, hoping that it might be a quick build. I'll post pics later as I go along. I never noticed this until last night, but while the box art looks nice, the artist made a big mistake. Look at the central thruster pod. It's facing the wrong direction! That's supposed to be an intake, but the thruster nozzles are pointed forwards instead of being in back. Oops!

I have an old Macross pencil board that advertises Imai and Arii kits. Here are scans of the front and back. That Macross fortress in Storm Attacker mode looks pretty blocky and dumb.

Thanks for sharing. It was clever how he used those Wave support parts to modify the leg joints. That way the parts can be painted separately, then assembled. The joint can now pivot, too. I liked what he was doing with the UV resin to do the eye. Unfortunately, he didn't show a close-up of the part after the UV resin had cured. My idea is to cram Oyumaru into the camera eye to make a mold, cut out the center, then put the mold into place and backfill it with UV resin. I could maybe create a socket for a red 3mm LED to go behind it to light it too. I should put in a good word for a YouTube modeler in NZ who goes by "Duck Playing Chicken" who lights up Macross and Yamato kits. He lit the Hasegawa Regult kit and showed how he had also done the same for the old Bandai repop of the Imai Regult. I think the next one I wanna light would be the Defender kit by Bandai/Imai. Have the AA guns blazing and the spotlights on.

Thanks for the pics! That resin kit looks considerably larger for sure. Is there a clear part for the mono eye lens? The 1:100 scale Glaug by Imai did not, but I believe their Regult came later and it had a clear part for the lens. Some of the Arii kits have nice surface detail, but once built they look off. Their proportions are not as nice as the Imai kits have. BTW, what is "HMR?" Sorry for the newb question.

Thanks! I managed to accomplish a lot with this old kit, drilling holes and inserting SMDs for the sensors on the fastpack, etc. Nav lights are disabled during combat, and with the flashing gunpod in an attack pose, it was my excuse to not try to light those up. I'm currently working on a non-lighted Hasegawa Valk (I plan to build it as Kakizaki's Valk) and I'd like to start on the Plamax Valk soon too. I also have the Hasegawa Armored Valkyrie left unfinished, and yesterday I started on three Zentraedi ships from Arii. But someday whenever I tackle my 1:48 Strike Valk by Hasegawa, I intend to have nav lights, collision strobes, and the wing lamps lighted as well. This old Imai mold kit was practice!

Yes, some commenters are hoping that the appearance of the fighter pod would be foreshadowing. I do believe that Hasegawa has done this in the past. Maybe with the Crusher Joe kits. I cannot remember.

I got to know a man at Won Fes in Chiba several years ago who made garage kits of Zentraedi ships. I didn't buy any, but rather I bought his Lovely Angel ship from Dirty Pair. He introduced me to the founder of Studio Nue and his wife since he knows I'm a Macross fan. I felt unprepared because I hadn't known the founder's name prior to meet him, and I forgot his name soon afterwards.

Thanks! So many things went wrong with this build, but I managed to rescue it. The suit glows in the movie, so that's what gave me the idea. However I only managed to make the shoulders glow and not the cuffs. After he crash-lands with Minmay, Hikaru turns his suit's glow lights off and her glow-in-the-dark dress lights up.

I'd like to see them do the Zentraedi fleet ships. I have all of the old Arii kits besides Kamjin's ship. Breetai's ship is too short and not proportional. It would be cool to see these as kits, but I've no idea how profitable they may be.