Vic Mancini

If there ever is a reboot, (praying to God that there won't be...ever), do you really think the new VF-1 would look anything like the old VF-1? I assume they would completely revamp it. And not just in the way they modernized the look of the VF-1 to make the VF-0...I mean a completely new looking fighter based on modern day and next generation design aesthetics. A rebooted VF-1 would probably look more like something out of Yukikaze than the VF-1 designed back in the 80s.

That's true, but the Yamato's configuration was pretty minimal compared to what I'm seeing in that picture from the Master File. That picture above of the 19 with it's legs angling down really resembles the VF-1 with super parts. So do the 19's leg fast packs now fit completely underneath the wing roots? That area around the wing roots and the FPs on the original line art was one of the most anime magical aspects of the original design. And the reason why Yamato had to put in those slots on the leg armor for the wing roots, I guess.

Those are some massive leg fast packs. It took me a while to figure out what I was looking at in the intake area, but I can see now that the legs are angled down at the "Gerwalk leg hinge" sort of like how the VF-1's legs are configured when it's equipped with super parts. The standard VF-19 leg attachments don't do that.

My bet is VF-25 next, and VF-22 after that. Maybe it's just me but I think the 22 is the most popular valk after the 1, 19, and 25. VF-17 and 11 are wishful thinking IMO.

That is pretty awesome. Where is that illustration from?

I've seen a lot of amazing stuff in the last few years of lurking on this board, but this is the check mate of Macross modeling. All those little 1/2000 Valks really complete the kit and give the Macross a sense of scale and weight.

I'm not so sure about that. The VF-1's foot/nozzle has sidewalls. The VF-19's doesn't. So I don't see how the 19 could vector the thrust/exhaust to the sides without any sidewalls on the nozzle. But I'm just nitpicking here. The VF-19 is a hyper advanced (and most importantly fictional) aircraft. I'm sure it has all kinds of highly effective maneuvering techniques and laughs in the face of any yaw issues.

So you're saying people will either love it, or hate it, or be somewhere in the middle? That's a bold prediction. (Just teasing). "Species" was the first thing I thought when I saw the trailers too. I had no interest in this movie, but now I'm sort of curious.

Cybernator! Such a great game. ...From what I remember anyway. It's probably been 15 years since I've played it.

Hmmm, I still don't understand this wing. It doesn't look to me like the light gray panels move at all through the sequentail diagrams. Even if the light gray panels retracted and disappeared completely there is still too much "white wing" to fully swivel back without the wring root needing to de-hinge anyway. Maybe the light gray panels have to do with what's going on in the bottom right diagram? The one that shows the wing swiveling in smaller increments.

I was working on a theory in photoshop to see how the wing could configure into the hangar/storage mode (that's what I'm calling it) shown in the coloured picture. My theory involved the two mechanical arms, one telescopic, the other static, sliding backward into the wing root on an unseen track...(see yellow arrow). But then I ran into a whole new problem. I can't for the life of me figure out how the wing transforms into battroid mode. If you line up the leading edge of the wing with the corner of the wing root like how it's supposed to be in the line art for battroid, the trailing corner of the wing sticks out of the wing root. Does anyone have good scans of the master file battroid mode and how the wing is configured in relation to the wing root? Did they retcon the wing transformation to resemble the "hangar/storage" mode of the coloured picture? Cuz I'm at a loss. EDIT/ADD: Nevermind...I found a scan online. Looks like they did indeed retcon the way the wing transforms for Battroid. The leading edge of the wing no longer lines up with the corner of the root.

Nice, thanks for posting that. Looks like the mechanics that pivot the wing around are not only inside the wing root, but inside the wing itself. It also looks like the wing may be able to slide around in that root/glove more than I thought. In the bottom-left diagram it shows the wing fully retracted in a different way than the full retraction in the coloured/storage mode illustration. Probably because the bottom-left (high speed mode) retraction would scrape the pavement if the wings were also angled 90 degrees down for storage mode. ....If any of that makes sense. Either way, the high speed mode in the master file is different than the anime and line art. The master file way would involve de-hinging the wing root mid-air for a brief moment to get into high speed mode, also. And I'm pretty sure that didn't happen in the anime. But whatever. The Master File makes more sense mechanically, so it's probably retconned by the big guy himself.

The wing <magically> folds straight back into the leg on it's original hinge in the line art, and it seems to unhinge and slide outward before retracting against the leg in what I've seen from the Master File.

Well, errors are possible. I don't have the actual book, but from the preview scans I'm seeing the high-speed variable wing mode is definitely different from the original line art over at MMM. Something changed there. Whether it's a "error" or merely a retconned factoid, (like the size of the VF-11 was almost retconned), I guess we'll never know for sure.

I'm 31 years old, for the record.

Ok...I'm still trying to understand what your point is here. So you do agree that the scaling in SDFM is terrible? Your issue is simply with someone attributing it to the 80s era?...Is that correct? Dude, I really don't care. If you say it has nothing to do with the 80s era, then I'll trust your expertise. My point is simply that it's kind of ridiculous to be rationalizing the bad scaling of Regults and their pilots in SDFM, and the scale of the new 1/60 toys, by way of fractional macro/micronization and other speculative magical solutions. Unless you are disagreeing with that, then there isn't much to discuss.

Megatron, a huge robot, transformed into a tiny revolver. I'm not saying the artists of Transformers didn't understand perspective/scale, or didn't have funding, or were bad at drawing. I'm saying they just didn't care. They were making a dumb cartoon to sell toys to kids and never expected to be launching a legendary franchise that grown adults would be taking seriously, questioning the realism of, and trying to rationalize 30 years later. I dunno, I guess I just notice a lot more anime magic the further back in time you go. When super transforming robot cartoons first started coming out in the 80s, relatively little consistency was given to things like scale and transformation mechanics. The creators generally took things like realism less seriously. What's your real point here? That the scaling in SDFM was accurate because artists in the 80s were just as talented/schooled/funded as artists today? It makes more sense to you to rationalize solutions to SDFM scale discrepancies by coming up with ways for the Zentrans to Micronize themselves fractionally to fit into under-sized mecha? How do you rationalize Valks changing scale from one scene to another?

I'm loving those camo schemes.

You guys are so funny. If the Zentraedi could just micronize themselves to different heights to fit their under-sized mecha, why be macronized at all? What's the point of building mecha that need to carry 18,000+ lbs of dead weight when you could just micronize the pilot down to 150 lbs, (or hell, even 150 grams), and use the rest of the excess thrust of the mech to carry extra ammo or something useful? We're talking about a cartoon made in the 80s. The scaling was never accurate to begin with. VF-1 battroids were supposed to be the same height as an average Zentran, but the animators goofed and didn't illustrate the Regults large enough. There's really no way to rationalize the discrepancy of sizes in Macross without defeating the purpose of having macronized Zentran pilots.

^ You mean exactly like the line-art? Sorry, I couldn't resist. I've always hated the fat rear end of the VF-19 variants. Put me in the camp that is patiently hoping and waiting for a Ver3 YF-19.

Quoted for truth. I was thinking the same thing when Agent One first made his comments. But I disagree with the notion that the show is for immature components of the brain. I don't think there is anything immature about the premise of the show. Why can't a grown man wonder who would win in a fight between a Samurai and a Spartan? It's just a hypothetical. There's nothing "stupid" or immature about that. Those kinds of hypothetical questions are interesting and are exactly what jump starts the brain. Bash the science of the show all you want, but don't hate on the premise. The premise is awesome. If the show was done by the Myth Busters crew, it would probably be perfect in every way.

Just finished watching the Season 1 wrap-up recorded on my box. The Knight got screwed! He wasn't even considered for the episode because he lost earlier in the season to the Pirate, but the only reason he lost is because the Pirate had gun powder. To make matters even worse, the pirate was considered a "modern warrior" for the wrap-up episode and wasn't even in contention for the ancient warriors which is where the Knight would have been categorized. I haven't watched the Knight vs Pirate episode in a while, but I remember the Knight having some pretty bad ass weapons, training, and armor. He would have put up quite a fight against the Samurai and Spartan who were selected as the top ancient warriors of season 1.

Just watched SWAT vs GSG-9. I thought the episode kinda sucked. The GSG-9 assault rifle was clearly superior IMO, but SWAT won that part of the match-up based on the team's speed through the course. What are we testing guys?...the weapon or the speed of some individual members from each assault force? And then I got even more disappointed when they gave so much credit to the shockwave tazer, in favor of the GSG-9 stun grenade. I mean yeah, the grenade isn't that flashy, but if you're going to allow the tazer to be tested on a live human being then why can't they test the grenade on a live person? Put some safety goggles on him, and a cup to protect his junk, and see what kind of effect the grenade has. It's only fair. Not to mention the grenade is so simple and foolproof and can be tossed around corners and through doorways. They didn't test the accuracy of a tazer vs the accuracy of a freakin' grenade. But the producers were like, "A grenade?...that's it? How borrring. Winner goes to the ridiculous tazer contraption!" Lame. SWAT definitely had the advantage with the shotguns, and the sniper rifles were a draw IMHO, but you could argue GSG-9 had the advantage in the rest of the competition. ADD: One knock I will give to the GSG-9 is their hilarious helmets. They look like freaking Spaceballs!

Lmao. Oh damn, a Real Ultimate Power tribute episode never even occurred to me. Now I'm disappointed too.