Batou

Meh. Adam West will always be Batman to me. "Quick, Robin! Use my Bat-Shark Repellant Spray!"

No thanks. I'd much rather use the stickers set aside from Takatoys for just this. Unless you seal those decals in, they're going to come off way to easily. Mine are mostly display pieces, but I still can't keep myself from handling them all the time, and durability is a must. While the Yamato stickers pretty much suck, I still think that after-market stickers are the way to go.

Holy cow is that thing big.

That guy does awesome work. If anyone's interested, Terry also posted a buildout summary of that VF-1D model here: Link It doesn't have all the details and "in-process" shots that accompany the step-by-steps our resident master wm cheng is so gracious to provide us with (which help more than you can ever imagine - again, thank you!!! ), but it's a great read and very good material.

I never said the valks were inadequate - far from it. It was almost entirely due to their technical advantage that they survived long enough to get back to Earth. That and the Zentran's bone-headed tactics as far as trying to take the Macross in one piece by sending in outclassed battlepods to their doom time and time again in an attempt to board and sieze it (if they just wanted to destroy it, they could have done that from orbit before it ever left S Ataria). I do believe, however, that the VF-1's would have been much more effective in more capable hands - at least early on in the war. They weren't outmatched, but the Regult pilots were in their element in deep space, and when you've got 200 valks vs 1000's of pods, any advantage is going to cause problems and casualties. Anyway, I think what I was trying to say is that while the VF-1 was indeed vastly technically superior to the Zentradi strike craft they were pitted against, their advantage was dulled by inexperienced pilots. Towards the end of SW1, that would obviously change, but during the first few months, I bet there were a lot of friendly losses. From what I recall, it was mentioned several times in the original series as well as in Macross Zero that most of the experienced fighter pilots were decimated during the Unification wars (remember Roy and whatsisface talking about the 'chicks'?). The wars didn't end until around the time when the Zentradi arrived (maybe they were still going on - didn't they blame the "accident" on S Ataria on anti-UN terrorists?). It's then reasonable to also assume that the more experienced pilots wouldn't be stationed aboard the Macross when they had bigger and more tangible fish to fry in the form of the Anti-UN forces - you have to remember they had no idea when if ever the aliens would come. Agreed - they were qualified to fly in space. However, actual combat in space was still pretty new, and whatever tactics they had were for the most part unproven under real combat conditions. The incident on the Tsiolkovsky aside, there just wasn't a whole lot of fighting in space up until that point. Being capable of flying a craft in space and being combat effective in it are two very different things. But they didn't have much of a military in space - they were a lone underequipped battle cruiser without any hope of reinforcements, supplies, and now a 70K strong civillian population to worry about. The Macross wasn't called into action fully equipped for the situation they were thrust into - they were about to undertake their maiden flight, and weren't entirely sure how a lot of the systems even worked. Under those circumstances, they'd have to make due with whatever means at their disposal - including, but not limited to, putting every warm body they could manage into the seat of every valk and destroid they had at their disposal. Again, agreed, but faced between anhilation in a vacuum, or recruiting some newbs with some civillian flight experience, but no combat experience, was a logical if desperate choice. It would be especially challenging for those who learned to fly in atmosphere to unlearn old habits that might get them killed. I'm sure they'd learn, but it takes time, and time was something they didn't have in vast quantities. I imagine for every Hikaru and Max they recruited, there were a disproportionately greater number of poor schlubs who bought in deep space.

Nice pics, Hubert. Got mine yesterday too. I swear - maybe I'm just extraordinarily lucky, but I don't know what all the fuss about SAL is about. My last three shipments from HLJ using SAL arrived within a week. (Of course you know I just jinxed myself now, huh? ). Anyway, it's definitely very cool and looks fantastic posed alongside the other two. I think I'm going to pass on the yellow version, but might just pick up an Eva 03 if they ever make it (or was it 04? - whichever was the black one that Toji [briefly] piloted).

Weta, Peter Jackson's SFX house is doing the effects for it. Neither Jackson, nor any of the other staff associated with LotR are involved, though. Kind of like how ILM does special effects for lots of movies, but you wouldn't say that George Lucas is involved in any way.

You definitely owe it to yourself to see Evangelion if you never have before. It's hands down one of the best anime series ever created, and you're really missing out. Just don't pass judgement on it until you see it all the way through - including End of Evangelion. I watched it once years ago, got through a few episodes, and wasn't that impressed, so I dropped it. Fast forward a few years, and I gave it another chance, and was just totally blown away (hey - I was unemployed and had a lot of time on my hands ). VERY few series solicited the kind of raw emotional reaction out of me like Evangelion did. Simply a masterpiece on par with the best ever. Other than that? I'm not entirely sure what you've seen and what you haven't, so I'll just stick to the newer stuff: I hear good things about Noir, but I still have yet to watch past the second episode (I own 4 disks so far, and have the whole series in avi). I've been loving Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, but you can't get it in N America yet. If you have broadband, torrent, IRC, or Kazaa will hook you up while we wait for a domestic R1 release. Hellsing - I'm pretty sure this one is out in N America, and you just have to love Gonzo. Rahxephon was pretty entertaining, but I'd recommend renting before you buy. I was a little letdown, but YMMV. Full Metal Panic - very nice. Great action, and sense of humor. I was very impressed with this one.

And if you don't like Minmay music, you probably won't. Anyway, it was worth it to me for all of the $9.99 or so I paid for it, but YMMV. I see them going for really cheap on Ebay all the time - you can probably pick it up on the cheap from there. It's worth it, if only for the closure to the original series. And the VF-4's.

How can you fight a war if you can’t handle a little booze?

I remember reading about that Tsiolkovsky incident, and Global's role in it. That doesn't prove anything conclusively, though - where was it ever mentioned strike craft were involved in that fight? Or even if they were, that it was an effective first test of space combat by UN Spacy pilots? I would imagine if there were two seperate fighter forces involved, neither really knew what they were doing. Kind of like two virgins fooling around. All the compendium says is it was the first successful combat test of reaction weaponry in space. I don't deny that there were VF-1's aboard the ARMD's - they were built with space flight in mind. I'm just saying that it would take a while to 'unlearn' habits picked up from flying in an atmosphere. Simulator and training time are one thing - flying combat sorties is entirely different. And I'm certain that most of those experienced pilots were killed early on in the war, and replaced with fresh new cannon fodder in their brownies. Even these "experienced" guys were greenhorns compared to Roy and the very few remaining aces left over from the Unification wars. Also, Isamu Atreides mentioned a very good point - UN Spacy was losing pilots left and right, and they didn't exactly have an excess of experienced combat pilots to begin with. They were actively recruiting ANYONE with flight experience once they were cut off from Earth, and I can't imagine many of the kids they recruited had logged any time in space. How do you think Hikaru, Max, Kakizaki, et al wound up in the pilot seat of the most expensive and sophisticated fighter ever created at the time? Look at Max - someone with his eyesight (meaning less than perfect 20/20) wouldn't even be allowed into the cockpit of an F-14. Certainly not within the 6 months it took them to get home - modern fighter pilots spend a VERY long time in flight school before they're even considered for combat duty. I don't doubt that some of the fighter pilots had spent some time in lower orbit doing practice maneuvers. I don't, however, think that just because you've spent some flight hours in space and in a Zero-G simulator will give you your "space legs" (for lack of a better phrase ). While the valk pilots may have been able to cope - especially in light of their vastly superior weaponry, they still weren't as used to space combat as the Zentrans who had lived their entire lives in space, and had been training in Zero G since they popped out of the cloning machine.

I'll back you up on this one, and I'm a little surprised so few others voted for 7. Whether you liked the series or not, you can't deny it had some of the coolest mecha designs period. I'm still hoping for a VF-17, 19S, and/or 22S. A VF-11C in full armor would be the icing on the cake (and expensive, but I'm getting used to that by now ...)

One GBP for me, if you please.

I think that was definitely mentioned in the TV series - I remember during the first sortie after the fold, Roy remarked how much harder the enemy pods were to kill than when they had first fought them over S Ataria (or something to that effect). I'm pretty sure that the valks definitely had the advantage in atmosphere, because of the stuff you mentioned, but also because that's where the pilots had learned to fly. Flying in space would be totally different because you don't have to worry about lifting surfaces and aerodynamics - pointing your nose downwards doesn't help you pick up speed and rolling into a banking turn won't bleed off momentum due to drag. Essentially, you don't just have to re-learn how to fly, but you have to unlearn unconscious habits you pick up from flying in atmosphere, and you have to fight off your natural instincts under combat conditions. Messy. The only long range "punch" the Zentradi had were on their capital ships, and maybe on some of the modified missle Regult pods. From what I recall, they weren't too terribly effective. UN Spacy, however, had nukes (or "reaction weapons", whatever is PC) they could carry on strike craft far out of the range of Macross' main guns. Quite a first line of defense, but even those weren't enough to take 'em all out. Bare in mind that I'm talking about DYRL tactics here - I know in the TV series reaction weapons were only used in the first episode, and during the final fight with Bodolza. In DYRL, though, I remember Skull squadron launched the UMM-7's from long range first, and then mopped of the survivors once they were in range of their standard armanents.

Yep. That's my Shirow, all right. Try reading Appleseed Book 4 sometime. I had to re-read it a half dozen times or so before I fully understood it all. I'm not sure if it's because something gets lost in the translation, or if his plots are just really that intricate and convoluted. It's probably a mixture of both.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. The Zentrans could have easily blown the Macross to atoms if they had the mind to - remember in DYRL when that Meltrandi gunship was descending on the raised alien island, it shot it's main gun and blew the two booms off the top of the SDF-1 pretty easily. Had that hit been a little lower, it would have taken out the bridge and with it the rest of the ship. Now you can go on about the pinpoint barrier system, and the omnidirectional shield (can't remember what that was called off the top of my head), but all of that wouldn't hold up for very long if the Zentradis took off the kid gloves. The problem was that the Zentran were under strict orders to capture the ship intact, and this isn't exactly their specialty - conquest through overwhelming numbers was. I agree that the valks vastly outclassed the bulk of the Zentradi fighters - mostly Regults - especially toward the end of the war, when the FAST packs and all that extra available armanent was at their disposal. You have to remember, though, that 1.) As someone said above, there were only about 200 valks stationed on the Macross, vs heaven only knows how many battlepods 2.) The Zentradi were especially more accustomed to fighting in deep space, whereas this was completely new to the UN Spacy pilots. Flying a fighter in space has to be tough enough even for experienced pilots (no drag from atmosphere, nothing to slow you down, all that inertia that doesn't bleed off on turns, etc, which all means you pretty much have to un-learn all of your fighter-pilot instincts as they will now get you killed in Zero-G), much less having to juggle two different flight modes (Gerwalk, Battroid). I'm assuming they had some pretty effective flight simulators for training the newbs, but nothing compares to the real thing. Which brings me to ... 3.) There wasn't exactly a plethora of experienced combat pilots on the Macross since most of the real pros were killed during the Unification wars. Sure there was Roy, but aces like him were few and far between, and seeing how they were actively recruiting pilots from within the civillian population onboard, it doesn't speak really well for the availability of trained military pilots who knew how to use all of that sophisticated weaponry effectively.

It's a joint Japanese and Hollywood (really New Zealand) effort: Link. Supposedly, Weta is doing the SFX, and ADV and Gainax will produce it. I don't believe Hideaki Anno is involved with this, however, but I'm not sure. Anyway, Gainax and Weta joining up sounds tempting, but I don't think fancy special effects are going to be enough to save this one.

It's even more unlikely that this project is destined to turn out as anything other than a smelly fly-infested heap of poo by the time they're done with it. This is a sacrelige and should have been stomped dead in it's tracks - I don't care who they get to make it. This entire thing stinks of Waterworld and Super Mario Brothers to me, and I hope they finally learn their lesson when this fails miserably. Some things just don't need the live action treatment, and this is one series that certainly won't lend itself to the medium. If and ONLY if they treat this with the reverence and respect it deserves AND make it 4+ hours long - which they obviously won't - will they keep from alienating the fans of this series who will be the only ones who would go to see this, anyway. So help me - if they get a bunch of caucasian kids to play Shinji, Rei and the others, I'm marching down there to crack some skulls. A live-action Akira, and now this??? It's this sort of Hollywood nonsense that made me start watching Anime in the first place ...

Still waiting for mine, but I think I know what you're talking about with #2 above. Due to the placement of the die-cast swingbar, the shoulders won't sit as high as they're supposed to in fighter mode on the 1/48's. Compare it a Hasegawa or the line art, and you can see that the arms on the 1/48 just sit too low in fighter mode (they should be just about level with the head, and obviously aren't). That's not a rip or a complaint - it's just one of the few necessary compromises made in this sculpt, and that's why the gunpod will always sit too low - FAST packs or not. I also think that's why the arms were made so skinny - to minimize the effect this had on the fighter mode profile.

I've actually gotten some pretty good results with Gundam markers on my Yammies. Use the gray ones on the lighter areas, and use black ONLY on darker colored pieces to bring out the detail. It's tempting to go over the lines multiple times, but I find it comes out just way too dark if you do anything other than a single pass. I agree Gundam markers are much too large to be of much use in modelling or something (why would you use a marker when you could do an oil wash, anyway???), but the Yamatos have some pretty thick and deep panel lines - especially the 1/48 line - that lend themselves pretty well to them. Whichever way you do it, I definitely think it really brings them to life, especially when viewing them from a distance. I'm going to have to get a camera to show these things off one of these days ...

Yeah, I broke down and picked up one of each. Only managed to get the red one in metallic, though, and now that I did, I wish I had held out for the metallic versions of them all. They're pretty cool, and definitely look better than the VF-1 super-posables they released. Just can't get enough of that Legioss goodness. This was always one of my favorite mecha designs of all time, and it's good so see someone release new items based on these designs, even if it is Toynami. I just hope they bring down the asking price of that MPC they're planning to release - attaching to that Tread will be cool and all, but $80 for a 1/55 Legioss - even an all die-cast one - seems more than a little excessive to me. I guess there's always ebay ...

Totally agreed. It was pretty cool up until that point, but the ending seemed rushed and left the whole series feeling very unfinished. I thought I read somewhere they were making a sequel, but I can't recall from where. Maybe I'm just imagining it, but I'd tune in for a second series if they made it.

Yep. It's a conspiracy. I would imagine that Yamato will indeed make the most of the changes in the 1/48 VF-1J's and you'll see a M&M release with TV FAST packs. I wouldn't be surprised if they package them with the FP's as a set - Max and Millia's FP's had colors to match their 1J's, so it wouldn't make a lot of sense to package the FAST packs seperately.

The new '19 is confirmed to be an all new sculpt, so no - it won't be like the other Macross Plus Yammies that were re-released with FP's. Other than that, there haven't been any other updates at all. I would imagine the transformation will be pretty much the same too: It wouldn't be a YF-19 if it was much different, would it? It is expected to look a lot better than the original 19 they released, but no one's seen it outside of Yamato to confirm this (maybe Graham, but he won't talk).

I think you can get all of your answers from master Tenjin's art (below). Other than that, I think you can get some excellent results using just oil washes and drybrushing. The way it's laid out makes it really easy to get good results using those techniques, and AFAIK, wm cheng used both of these when making his VF-1A max super valk. PM me if you want a larger pic of this - I shrank this, but the original is in 1280x1024 (makes a VERY nice wallpaper).