imode

Then again, It was mentioned in another forum that there's really no comparable "one-stop-shop" for Macross fandom in Japanese, and we do get quite a few Japanese in the forums apparently, so who knows? I think the logical progression is something like this: 10 Yamato reads 2ch Japan forums. 20 Yamato sees information about new toy leaked! 30 Yamato panics! 40 Yamato calms down and reads more. 50 Yamato finds that information came from MW. 60 Yamato proceeds to scold MW and Graham. 70 Goto 10

I have a feeling they may occasionally troll through here just to make sure their secrets aren't leaked. As to whether they come here to listen to our criticism and input, well, that's debatable.

Ummm... Why would a toy based on a non-transformable mecha have a transformation? Well, it would be if it was a Koenig Monster. But alas, no. The monster is not transformable.

Haha, man, stop typing so fast. Your posts are starting to look like Ali Sama's! Okay, we can arm your plane to the teeth but that'd be like showing up to the party without a date. We'll slap a shitload of missiles on your bird, only for you to fly over enemy territory and be greeted by a million missiles. Sure, we've got countermeasures, radar jammers and other craft launching HARM after HARM at anything that turns on its radar, but personally, just between you and me, I'd feel a lot more secure in a gunless, slow flying F-117 than an F-15 armed to the teeth. Is it? I always envisioned its first day role to be exactly like the F-117, except cheaper, faster and more maneuverable. My point was that, a lot of people would prefer not to get into that knife fight in the first place. Given the chance, I think anyone with a decent sense of self-preservation would rather fight BVR and avoid close-in dog fighting. An F-16 is an amazing plane, and while it's more than a match for the planes it was intended to fight, next gen fighters and even current gen fighters will most likley be outfitted for BVR as well. If you insist on countering BVR with the F-16's forte of in your face flying, then it'll be like trying to kill a sniper by running up to him with.... with a knife. While the F-16 has the option of close-in fighting, the USAF gave it AMRAAM capability specifically so that it wouldn't have to rely on it. The F-15E will probably be around for awhile. However, with F-22 on the horizon, the domestic lifespan of the F-15 is in question, especially in the minds of Washington politicians. You can say goodbye to the F-15C though. Semantics! Agh!!! By benefit, I meant receive new airplanes. The main benefit of the F-35 and F-22 is the stealth. Without it, any F-14, F-15, F-16 whatever, could do the same job equally or better. For the Navy and Marine strike planes to do the job you needed the F-15's. Now, the F-117's which attacked the heart of Baghdad didn't need that support, and therein lies the benefit. The beauty of stealth capability is that it allows one plane, be it a F-117 or a B-2, to perform the job of half a dozen or so planes. Now, if an F-35 can perform the stealth-strike role just as capable as an F-117 or F-22 but at half the price, is it really justifiable to buy more F-22's? One upside to the F-22, it's so expensive that no one else can afford it. This guarantees only WE have the latest and greatest. The F-35 at the promised price, was so cheap that everyone and their dog lined up to buy them. Let's hope we never go to war with the Dutch. If you anyone wants a great read about the JSF, you can go here. It's a transcript from the PBS Nova show on the competition between the 32 and the 35.

Information High and Voices from - M+ Mouichido, Love you - MII ai, oboeteimasuka - DYRL tenshi no enogu - FB2012 Macross OP - SDF:Macross Planet Dance - M7 There's nothing really notable in MZero. I suppose that's because of the lack of vocals, except for those weird ones in different languages. Still, for weirdo songs in different languages, M+ is all you really need.

F-117 quick independent strike, first day bomber -> F-35 same role F-16 maneuverable, close-in strike fighter -> F-35 maneuverable BVR strike fighter Harrier VTOL strike fighter -> F-35 VTOL strike fighter The air force version is not outfitted with STVOL primarily because they take off from mile long runways. No one really needs these capabilities except for the Marines. Now, the interesting thing I just read on Lockheed-Martin's webpage is that the F-35A (the air-force version) includes an internal gun. The USMC version can be equipped with an external gun, to which you'll probably say "external = not stealthy", but if the plane is using an external gun to perform CAS, that means you're already quite low to the ground, and at this point stealth will do you diddley. But it's cheap, and we're already replacing the F-15 with the F-22. Like the F-117 the F-22 is another expensive plane that illustrates the current downward spiral of America's military. To be sure, they are great planes (even though the Russians claim they have a Mig that can already beat it), but as you also said, the military can only spend X amount. If they continued to build only the F-22 we'd end up with a significantly smaller force in the air, not to mention the only branch of service benefitting from the increased F-22 production would be the Air Force.

Okay, I know that spelling flames are lame, but this sentence has me imagining the start of a typical day on the USS Ronald Reagan something like this: F-35: "Good Morning, Mr. Hornet! My, don't you look Super today!" F-18E: "Why, thank you. Here's a dollar, kid, go buy yourself some fuel." http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=compliment http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=complement Kidding aside , nice post, imode. Muahaha, you know, I had typed that correctly originally! When I finally had the urge to retype it after the backspace fiasco, it was 1 in the morning.

Hhaha bizarre. Looks like an F-14 Valkyrie wielding one of Masamune Shirow's seburo gun designs.

I actually have a nice rendition of ai, oboeteimasuka done by Shimokawa Mikuni (she did Saiyuuki ed and the HxH Greed Island songs). Got nowhere to host it though...

Something is wrong with you man. It sounded like a white person from Texas trying to sing in Japanese. ... "Y'all" ?

You know, you're doing exactly what you get mad at us about. Actually no. What I said was that i would want higher quality versions of the 1/100 M0 toys , in other words bigger than the 1/100 M0 toys ,BUT I never have (or will) said I wanted those high quality to be 1/48. I still think that idea simply sucks for the majority of consumers. At this point I´m just hoping for 1/72 version , hopefully Yamato will surprise us and do them in 1/60 scale. I didn't say anything about 1/48's did I? I remember you got mad at a lot us when we looked at the 1/60 armored and said we'd pass on it and hope for a bigger better version. Now here you are looking at the 1/100, saying you're going to pass on it and hope for a bigger better version.

Dunno. The Jenius girls didn't seem to suffer from this, except for those random temper tantrums.

You know, you're doing exactly what you get mad at us about.

Gah, I come back only to find that Mikes and Ewilin have hit all my main points already! One thing I do want to stress however, is that a lot of you complain about the JSF replacing the F-14, which was not the original intent. The replacement for the F-14 was the super hornet. The F-35 was made to compliment the hornet and replace the A-6 which, I think we can all agree, is far past its prime. I also want to stress that the ability to launch from a carrier will probably start to play a major role. Looking at gulf war II, we saw exactly how many of our "allies" let us launch attacks from our airfields based in their countries. A few of them wouldn't even let our planes fly over their airspace. If the offending country has a coastline, we can park 4.5 acres of sovereign American territory right on their doorstep and strike them quickly and repeatedly. I also don't see why an F-16 will completely totally out-maneuver the F-35 as some of you seem to claim. Even if it can, as some of you have mentioned, the F-35's primary air-to-air capabilities lie in BVR attacks, and thus don't require the maneuverability that a close-in fighter like the F-16 has. I can see here you're already letting your nostalgia factor get in the way of better judgment. Your claim that they should "just build more F-117s!" probably illustrates this much better. While the F-117 is a great plane, it's got a couple things going against it. First of all, it's expensive. VERY expensive in fact. Not only is the plane expensive, taking care of a stealth aircraft with its fancy radar absorbing coat of paint also eats a lot of money as well. Now, if F-15's were so damn good, then maybe we should just buy two F-15's instead. Probably save us a few million too. But no, I don't see you saying "CAN THE F-117. IT IS THE SUCK". You realize that the two planes are built for two different purposes, and that regardless of cost, the F-117 is a good airplane that is perfect for what it does. You know you like the F-117, admit it. Oh, and by the way, last I checked, an F-117 didn't have any guns either. Lessons have been learned, but not quite exactly the ones you are thinking of. We learned it in World War II when Germany began deploying jet-powered aircraft and primitive cruise-missiles out of nowhere. Just think, had the war started 5 years later, we may have seen Me-262's against Spitfires and Hurricanes. Years later, the same thing happens again. We think we're safe at 80,000 feet and then a missile launched from the ground shoots down a U-2. It's easy to say, "what we got now is good enough", but what happens when one day some nutjob invents a shoulder fired missile that can shoot down a B-52 50,000 feet up? The United States didn't become the world's only superpower by constantly relying on 30 year old designs and concepts. In order to stay ahead of the pack we'd had to make changes; to advance and take risks. I like the F-35 and I'm really excited about it's potential (remember guys, 4 more years till deployment, lots of things can change). I'm not saying the F-35 is a panacea aircraft, but we should all wait and see its performance in actual combat before so quickly condemning it back to the drawing board.

Gah, I had a nice reply, but I pressed backspace and lost it all. Too lazy to retype the whole damn thing now. Maybe later.

NOooo~ Overtechnology is made out of people!&~~

In all the pics it says the price hasn't been decided yet. Most speculate that the msrp will be around 3880 yen. Not quite $40, but I'm just rounding numbers in all the wrong places.

LOL! Yeah, that was amusing to see. Now we'll have to compete to see who gets mentioned by name over there. Anyway, thanks for the translations. It looks like some of those fans are as obnoxious, outspoken and opinionated as we are. Well, ya gotta remember that there are at least a few English-speaking Japanese fans (such as Q-san) who visit the boards every once in a while, and certainly there's some word of mouth. IINM, quite a few Japanese fan-sites even link to MW. And isn't the whole object of being a fan to be obnoxious, outspoken and opinionated? If we weren't wouldn't we fall to the level of -- gasp -- mere viewer? Plus, even though Japan's networking infrastructure is booming and they have some of the fastest cheapest services in the world, many of their webpages haven't evolved past text-based forums and most people still believe the internet exists solely on their cellphones. By comparison, MW is a treasure trove of pictures. I have not seen a Japanese Macross webpage anywhere near as comprehensive as this one.

Probably around $40

The F-35 is so far away from it productions date that it would not be hard to envision a hole host of external stores being added to it arsenal, whether it be AIM-9's or AGM-65's. I read that in a "Low Threat Enviroment" the F-35 would be able to carry external stores in order to carry more ordanance. I think they pretty much want the F-35 to perform a role similar to an F-117, which is to give us the ability to strike silent and independently. They can also be deployed by carrier, so pilots don't have to fly half-way across the world from air bases in North America. Best of all, they're cheap. Less than half the cost of the F-117. Some people have questioned how effective it's stealth capabilities are, but who's to say really? I don't think anyone has that information. Once air superiority has been achieved (nowadays air superiority doesn't even mean shooting the other guy's airplanes down, it's more like bombing his radar and SAM sites), it will perform a role more like an F-16, carrying more payload. I don't see how this plane can be "worse" than an F-16 as some have claimed. I also don't see this plane ever replacing an A-10 or performing any type of CLOSE air support, but as a multi-role Strike Fighter (JSF) you could probably do a lot worse. Yeah. Having a slow-moving support craft with a nasty cannon spitting hot depleted-uranium death is always a plus. However, that A-10 won't always be up there and when you look in the sky, all you'll see is a F-16 or F-18 or god forbid, a B-52 30,000 feet up with a 1,000 lb. JDAM. If you're running from something-- well then my friend, you are crap out of luck. But if you're being pinned down like what happened to US forces at Mazar E-sharif in Afghanistan, I wouldn't mind a bomb dropping so much. Course the bomb dropped on top of them, but hey! Accidents happen! For all the low/slow flying that A-10's do, they still managed misidentify and proceed to plaster two British tank crews. Of course, F-117's cost over twice as much, but we American tax payers don't care, do we?

Isn't the internet great? Okay, I don't know how accuracte this is, but I'll post the link. http://www.rjlee.org/aakill.html These are all the air-to-air kills from Gulf War 1 which was 10 years ago. Note, the only two kills were from an internal cannon, both credited to A-10's. Everything else was missile missile missile.

I think I saw on the history channel that the Mig-15 was superior to the F-86 in almost every way, from speed to max altitude to range and armament. There was also a Korean defector who used his Mig-15 to escape and the tests done on the plane afterwards confirmed it. Of course, the US countered these inefficiences with better tactics, kind of like a Wildcat/Zero situation from World War II with great success. That doesn't mean the F-86 was a better plane. Likewise, Israel is and always has been a master of strategy. Read up on the 6-day war and you'll see that they defeated almost every nation around them with a smaller and inferior forces in both the air and on the ground. I have no figures to back them up, but I've read that stat for stat the more recent Mig and Sukhoi fighters have either equalled or surpassed American superiority fighters like the F-14 and the F-15. You can see for yourself the crazy maneuvers that the Russian planes can do at airshows (ignore the fiery crashes! ) I personally love the F-14, and it kinda makes me wince at the thought that a Russian plane can outfly an American built one. However, the war in Iraq and the Balkans showed that it's not the plane, but the pilot and the strategies.

Well, the MPC Alpha already has two big problems. 1. It's small 2. It's $80 At that size for that price, it's just not worth it.

Sure. I'll give you that. But what's easier to do? Pretend you are (for arguement's sake, let's say) North Korea. If the big bad Americans were coming to bomb the crap out of you, would you rather send your expensive Migs and Su's up only to watch them get shot down, or would you fire thousands of missiles? If you fire 235 missiles at an airplane, I'm sure one is bound to hit. Good-bye $40,000,000 worth of missiles. But hey, if you hit the airplane, the enemy loses a $40,000,000 plane, another $1 mil of payload and a pilot. I'm not saying that the JSF should replace anything (least of all a dedicated FIGHTER) because god-forbid we end up having to fight an enemy with a Rafale or a Eurofighter. But as a front-line stealth attacker, which is obviously the direction that they want to take it, a cannon is useless. The whole point of this thread was the F-35's role as CAS, not air superiority.

No. The cockpit in plane mode reminds me off the 1/72 YF-21's proportions where it was "snubbed" giving it a shorter cockpit in planemode but looking decent in battroid. Landing gear really is hideous though. If they make something perfect transformable, then I can overlook the proportion mistakes and such. If you're going to have swappable parts, the thing should look good in all modes.