mpchi

In regards to the cratched tampo printing, I was thinking...Since these are made by bandai, I have a Gundam marker set with black and red pens in it. What are the odds that these will be a decent color match? The Gundam white pen worked perfectly for the sratches I had on my MPC Beta, so perhaps these will match, especially since the VF-25 is a Bandai product as well.

Don't think the Gundam Markers are great match, unless you are not picky. Bandai used flat black on the prints, but Gundam Marker black always has that very shiny 'purple' sheen (similar to Sharpie). So any black marker touch up would stand out a lot under some light at an angle, due to its glossiness. Not to mention the Gundam Markers don't sit well on smooth shiny plastic surface. They rub and smear, but still stain the plastic a bit. So a warning for you before you decide giving it a try.

I got my Alto too. Haven't transform it yet, but its very beautiful in fighter mode. Though I've found that my pilot+seat assembled crooked... Do you guys happen to know if its being glued on or held by screws or peg? Doesn't seem want to move one bit with some push. But don't want to break anything on this brand new toy, so I might have to leave it the way it is. Guess Alto likes to lean on his left when riding the VF-25F, kind of like some people when driving...LOL. My road of Lemons never ends.

No, I'm pretty sure he is Rossiu's dad. ....

Can you point out where in the show that suggested this? I watched the series quite a few times on DVD, but didn't catch a hint of that. So very curious where I missed this connection.

That priest guy is not Rossiu's dad. He's the head of the underground village, and took care of Rossiu growing up. But he is not really related to Rossiu. Not to mention Rossiu looks kind of ugly at the end of the last episode.

I've just ordered the super packs from overdrive and just managed to get in before the dateline. Orders closes today the 5th January at 1:30pm Japan time as Overdrive needs to order from Tamashi website.

So there is no MW group buy? And Overdrive already closed the preorder for the Alto fast packs?! Can't even find the listing on their site... And I thought I was waiting until they post that up. Very frustrating... and looks like I missed the boat, even though I am anticipating it. Sucks...

http://hima-toy.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/200...nightgunda.html

May not be your usual Gundam fix, but from all the reviews I've read, this turned out to be a very fun awesome toy. The first prepainted SD Gundam action gokin figure of Bandai's new SDX line (not a lot of metal though, but still neat). Very cool for those that have fond memories of some of the old SD Gundam model kits 10-15 years back, or those like me that used to play some of the Banpresto video games with this Knight Gundam on the Super Nintendo. Lots of option parts to play with. Apparently, its selling like hot cakes in HK.

All of Hasbro's movie toys have - for lack of a better word- sucked!

Well - for what it's worth - I don't like Alternators and Binaltech. There were - to my mind - a few good molds - Hound, Jazz, Smokescreen - but the rest of them were pretty lousy.

Wow, don't know if I can agree on that. While Movie line has hits and misses, there are a few thats very good. Leader Prime (Takara Premium MA-21 specifically), Leader Brawl, Deluxe 08 Bumblebee are really nice (not perfect, but which TF toy is really?). BT also has a few really nice ones too. Kiss Hot Rod, Nemesis Prime, Broadblast, Smokescreen, Jazz are really some of the best TFs made. Don't think they suck much at all.

As of future MP, G1 Galvatron & Rodimus Prime (though I am fine with my Kiss Rodimus as is) would be likely candidates, and something I am curious to see, especially Galvatron. Even Henkei missed the mark on Galvatron, so it really needs a better effort to revive this dude, or we'll just get stuck for many more years with sub-par looking Galvatron toys.

I myself am not particularly excited about MP Grimlock. Like the sculpt, but not too fond of the way the chrome is used and the colors, even if its faithful to G1. Not a huge fan of the character, so probably only pick it up when its on sale.

Bump from the dead!!

Where's a good site to get 1/6 stuff? I used to go to SmallBluePlanet years ago but they're long gone. I finally fixed my Protect Gear Midori and am hoping to get one of the male Protect Gears before too long, gotta get an arsenal of WWII-era Axis weaponry to out fit them properly

Vostok 7

For Medicom stuff, http://www.angolz.com/home/storebrowse.aspx from HK is a good site to order from, get good discount sometimes. For Hot Toys, you can either go ebay, or http://www.toys2.net/home.php in Canada also have a good selection. http://www.cornerstorecomics.com/ has a decent selection on Medicom & Hot Toys as well, their price are pretty good.

http://www.onesixthwarriors.com/forum/ has a lot of sponsor links and a forum where you can find more info, cool military kit bashes, or places to get loose parts.

http://www.runboard.com/bmedicom has more discussion on Medicom stuff.

Man, I watched the DVD extras. Then realized I could find more & better 'making of' stuff on youtube than what is on the 'Special' DVD set. This is getting really sad... Waited for a long time to want to see all these stuff in details, with director thoughts, art, set building, filming stories, actors interviews...etc. of this great movie. Turn out the extras barely have anything but a very condensed version of 20 mins that talked about the suit, the batpod, and a bit on the sound. In Begins, just the Tumbler featurette alone took up 10-15mins.

Aww... DVD has a lot less extras? Didn't even know when I picked up mine this morning...sigh.

Though I am more of a DVD guy, but this is a bit disappointing.

Considering the deluxe sized nature of Alternity I think this line has a much better opportunity of channeling a G1 feel compared to BT. I also hope we might finally be able to get some real non-car alt modes, like semi's, tanks and planes that are sort of in scale. The only thing that peeves me is of course prime being a car. I'm not that G1 obsessive, but c'mon. They started off BT with smokescreen, a fairly obscure character. I know he was based off a famous race car and stuff, but then they could have found another stock race car to use and saved prime and megs for a truck and tank, two alt modes worthy of those two characters.

I kind of feel like Alternity won't be a long ongoing line like BT did, when they do Prime & Megatron right off the bat. Kind of reminds me the Nike Shoe Prime & Megatron releases.

Since my Ironhide will never look quite like a G1 Ironhide with his orange and black color scheme (didn't want to spend so much on a Henkei version), as well as having the screws exposed on the front arms, I thought might as well emphasize on the orange/silver/black combo and gave him some accent to that color scheme. Quite like it now, and look less plain when standing along side with my other Classic & Henkei guys.

Fans of Golgo 13, behold...

Hot Toys will get your cash...

New Info about Alto's "Fast Pack" at Tamashi's site

Awww...thats a bunch of bull crap! They made the Alto Fast Pack a Tamashii Web Store exclusive!! Meaning the only way we foreigners can get it is paying scalper prices on ebay... And also means its less likely there will be a DX set of Alto's VF-25 with Fast Pack (what I have been holding out for). Bad news indeed.

Hey Drifand! Thanks for the helpful overview! Looks like im getting me a Takara RDM-3

If you are looking for a Takara RDM-3 Red Shoulder custom, I have one in excellent condition (displayed a bit, rarely played with, has everything) that I am looking to part with. PM me if you are interested.

Like most people, I am not that happy with Sentinel Prime's height, specifically the length of his legs, and always wish his height matches up with Voyager Prime's. So with a night of experimenting, I finally figure out a way to solve that. Giving Sentinel new feet. Took me a while to figure out a good solution as there aren't much flat enough surfaces you can glue parts on to Sentinel's feet area. But eventually found a tight spots from the inside of the leg that has room for a small screw, and found a nice pair of usable feet from my scrap Alternator Roll Bar. So after some measuring, triming, and drilling, Sentinel got a lot taller, and more stability with added articulation on the feet, as well as an additional add-on to his truck mode.

As you can see, while Sentinel is still a tad shorter, its good enough for me. At least he no longer need Prime to get into 'midget mode (legs retracted)' just for Sentinel to feel better standing around. And gave Sentinel a nicer proportion overall. Pretty happy with the results.

picked some Animated i had been holding on cause of the new price, like Blackarachnia i would have grab Ratchet and Lockdown but got Blitzwing instead.

I wouldn't worry about Lockdown and Ratchet too much. They tend to be shelf warmers, so pretty sure you'll get a second chance on them later. Blitzwings do get snatched off pretty quickly. So good call on picking that guy first.

Yeah, its nice to see Deluxes cost only $7.77, when everywhere else raising their prices. Even Target is asking for $10.99 for the Animated TFs, when they used to be $9.99 not long ago. Too bad non of the Walmarts I frequent has the latest stuff. But I did managed to pick up quite a few of the older TFA Deluxes at the sale price there, like Jazz, Bumblebee, and Ratchet.

Got lucky and found the last Animated Sentinel at the store the other night. Wasn't sure if its a keeper at the moment, but decided to open this guy after seeing the potential of improvement with some minor paint app. End up liking it quite a bit as the truck mode is solid (though a tad small) and the robot mode has a lot of personality. And like some mentioned before, its quite accurate to the show. His upper body is nice and big, pretty close to the mass of the Voyager Prime. If only Sentinel's legs are an inch longer, then he'll be just a nice match up with Voyager Prime, even if Sentinel is a Deluxe.

A couple gripes on this guy. The hip ball joint while nicely designed, is not tight enough to support the upper body. Need the superglue trick to get this fix. Also, Sentinel is begging for an upper arm swivel joint. His sword and shield need those to get any decent poses. As of now, his upper body poses are pretty static. His legs got good range of posing though. Lastly, Hasbro could have done a little better on the paint. Sentinel seriously need some more paint on the head, and better paint on the weapons (clear blue plastic even better). Can't believe the spikes on the shield only has paint on the front and not the back.

Overall, a good fun figure with a very interesting transformation. Truck mode is decent, and the bot has a lot of personality. Upper body articulation is quite limited though, and the legs could be a bit longer.

I'll give it a solid 8/10.

As you can see, Sentinel is almost in scale to Voyager Prime (except the short legs). Therefore, turning Voyager Prime into 'midget mode' helps to blend the 2 together side by side.

8 is definitely my favorite. Not only was it very well animated and filled with awesomeness. It also tells almost the whole back story of Lord Genome in a mere 3:40 minutes. I like it better than the others, because it actually has some canon story elements that adds to the series. Not just some fun experimental music clips of an alternate universe. Wish the other videos were done in similar fashion. Very good stuff!

I saw someone on youtube commenting that this animation was actually footage used for the GL movie, but was paired with different music. Is that true? If so, that would be great, and one more good reason to have the movie DVD in my collection in the near future.

Regarding this:

Is this also the case with 2-D vs. 3-D animation, though? Does it really save time and money when you consider the personnel involved, the type of expertise, and the equipment? There are a couple of industry people I can ask about this.

It is, when you actually animate. 3D, you can always tweak and redo a shot, set it up at a slightly different angle, change timing however you want. 2D, you can't. And if the motion or timing didn't turn out too good, you have to redraw a lot of frames one at a time, rather than clicking the mouse and pull some slider in a 3D animation software.

I use SAL from HLJ almost all the time. I actually find the shipping time shortened in a couple recent orders. Generally takes 3 weeks to arrive (Bay Area, California). But there are a couple occasions (recently) that took as short as 10 days. I think SAL shipping time is pretty random. For details, I think HLJ actually has a page talking about how SAL shipping works, explaining the randomness of the shipping time.

I've been watching this on SciFi channel but I still don't know what to think about the show. I don't dislike it but I don't really like at the same time. I find it interesting but the character designs that you'd see in a comedy show tend to throw me off when there are serious moments.

Its meant to be a comedy afterall (though more than just comedy), even though it has serious moments. I quite like the character designs actually. Its a bit hard to see very unigue designs these days, after so many decades of anime. But they managed to come up with something different. Not something for everyone for sure, as the designs are very flamboyant and loud. But they sure leave an impression. A good one for most, but a bad one for others.

I just got my Dancouga - and actually, I'm not sure which version it is - first or second...have to check... but...

No neck problem.

I read about this supposed neck problem elsewhere, and was prepared for it...and er...it ...didn't happen...

The joint fits perfectly into the head and everything rests securely. My only qualm with ther figure is that it's top heavy and can flop - unless maybe there's some locking mechanism on the thighs that I've missed out on?

Anyways - great figure!

Now watching Choujuu Kishin Dancouga - been through the first three episodes and while it sometimes feels like an 80s video game, there is a good dynamic going what with the exploitation of anger to power the weapons (good psychological edge, kind of reminds me of EVA), and the jealousy of Sara who seems to fight the aliens only as revenger against Shapiro and Men in general ... then there's Shinobu (I think that's his name) who is the lamest of the cast; largely because he's a hot shot ace pilot who cares only about weapons' systems... although I give him credit for being a pretty ingenious field tactician - attacking the alien base as a way of drawing their forces away from the impending battle against civilians was a brilliant decision that probably saved lots of people's lives.

anyways - the figure is ace!

VFTF1

Don't think the neck is so much of a problem, but rather a sucky design. The head doesn't fall off or anything, but it either doesn't turn (without a neck articulation), or you have to swap in a neck just to pose, when Bandai could have just make a joint stationed on where the head goes. Kind of one of those "What were they thinking?" design connection.

On the other hand, Dan can be posed very sturdy without being top heavy. I haven't handled mine for a while, but there are some 'unusual small clicks" on the hip/thigh area that locks and allow you to bend the legs from the hip/thigh just about 5-10 degrees. So that should get rid of the top heavy issue, since mine stands like a brick.

This clip might shed some light on this 'debate', or just generate some good laughs. LOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qaz3KIYIu1M

This may not be good news, now that I see others have the same problem as mine on AnimeOnDvd forum.

There IS skipping on my Vol.3 disc 2, at the 28 min~ mark of the disc, in Episode 25, part A. The skipping happens at the exact spot everytime, and last(skip) for close to a minute of content, then back to normal. However, when I play it with my PS3, the skip is gone. So I do think the disc is defective (even though I just exchanged my copy, thinking it was just my copy before I saw this thread). But with some DVD players, you won't see the skip.