Anubis

Great news, pre-orders have surfaced for Evengelion Rei and Asuka Plug Suit figures from Medicom. These things look great from the two pics I found. Pricey like usual from Medicom, but it looks like you get what you pay for. 12800 yen (12160 with HLJ's early bird) so it's cheaper than some of their stuff at least. I haven't bought anything from Medicom yet, but I put the order in for these right away at HLJ. I skipped the Gothic Asuka PVC and the latest Sega figures, but definately want these. Next I hope they make a Shinji too. No one's made a good plug suit Shinji figure...ever to my knowledge. I've seen a couple resin kits, but that's it. It'd be nice to finish the trio.

I rather deal with Destiny's cast than that full of himself jackass. 333423[/snapback] They still took what started as a kickass show in the beginning and ended with a complete train wreck. There's no other way to describe it. When they decided to override the direction the show started in and swithced the focus to the AA crew (and so crappily so), they basically took the show's potential and spit on it. I was an apologist for this show, and tried really hard to love it finding the good out of the questionable (despite the hatred of the AA crew this show gave me), but the last 10 episodes were a pure crapfest.

That ending was pathetic. Just watched the Hiro version. Both superweapons went down way too easily. The MS fights ended too quick and simple. The Minerva went down too easy. Yzak and Dearka a;so commited treason the moment Eternal showed up. The final travesty: Rey changing his mind at the last minute, as if anything Kira could have said should have changed Rey's mind. That was pure mediocrity. Rey went there to shoot Kira in the back of the head, and shoots Dullindal? WTF. I am not happy. This was a BS ending. No resolution except for ending the fight. You're left with "what now?" At least Shinn and Luna are alive thankfully. All 3 Zaft Gundams are salvageable as well. The treatment of Shinn was disgraceful. They took any potential he had in the beginning and squandered it, and then do this as a final insult. If Orb falls the world is lost? Who cares about Orb? If the EA went down, and went down hard, how in the bloody hell would Orb be able to save the day? Wait...never mind, they just did. The bulk of Zaft couldn't stop a few traitor ships, remnant EA ships, a handful of Orb vessels, the Eternal and Archangel. The Messiah was covered in beam shields, where did those go when Kira started attacking it? The first genesis was phase shifted and anti-beam protected. Why wasn't this one? At least we didn't have to listen to Cagalli's crap in this episode. Just everyone else's. Very disappointing ending.

Making crap up as you go along is no way to make a series. Write the entire damn plot first and then you can properly figure out how to fit the stuff you want to in the space you have. It obvious in this show, even more so than the first show, that there was a lot more that was supposed to be in there, but because the writers WASTED too much time with excess there was no room left for the rest of what should have been there. The sheel level of plot holes in this series is nuts. Come on, In 50 episodes, there was not ONE mention of SEED Factor in the entire series. It's painfully obvious there was a lot of stuff left to do but they ran out of episodes. The writers need to be banned from gundam, and any long running show from here on out. It's pretty bad when their own crew comments on how the writers suck. Franchises are buried this way, and many have been. Sunrise needs to wise up before the next gundam series. Now, on a lighter note: Let's make more fun of Athrun. One positive about the end is: Shinn is alive, and he still gets the best girl. In a way, he still wins.

The reused footage in this show did get real annoying at times. Color swapping the reused footage for new suit color schemes was even worse.

It's cool that they at least acknowledge the short comings themselves. Maybe after this if they get another crack they can plan accordingly next time. A break would probably be good though.

Shinn's Counterattack. At least they didn't kill him or Luna. I would have put money on Luna dying. It does really piss me off that Justice and Freedom took no damage though. Even in the last show Freedom got beat up in the process. AA took a fair bit of damage from the Dominion. This is just stupid. Did the Godwanna, despite being HUGE, have no real armament? For that size it should have had a couple superlasers or something. It should have been able to obliterate at least something. This show could have been 3 times as good. It's still ok I guess. B-/C+. There were some merits to the show, but there were too many questionable decisions made that ruined it's full potential. Letdown after such a strong beginning. The writers should be ashamed of themselves. I really do hope they make another show or OVA. With a new writing team. One more chance to do some decent closure, or at least a stong story. CE has a lot of room for good material, it just takes quality writers to do it properly.

So... Athrun was more of a killa than Kira in the end fight? At least I didn't see that coming. His payback for being dumped on the whole series. The Rey bit sounds funny, but why not I guess. Can't wait to see it, but it's still disappointing to have an ending more rushed than the first series. Were the Doms at least destroyed?

And the completed product: The eye lights up real good: Engine detail: I used gloss aluminum for the engines. I initially wanted light gunmetal but the store didn't have it, so I thought this would be a good alternative. I think they came out ok. Armed: The finished model is actually pretty posable. There's a lot of arm movement possible. The gun doesn't hold real secure in the hand, but stable enough to pose with. In the cabinet:

Assembly Head: Weapons: I wish it came with the bazooka too instead of in the custom set. I also hate the traditional purple of the heat hawk, so it is now black as well. I love it this way. Right arm internals: Right leg internals: Torso rear: Here is where I get into the cables. The beads slip over the springs to form the cables, which are supposed to be secured at each end by a screw. On the head this worked fine because the screw was the right size to thread ok. The leg and torso cables were a whole different matter. The screws were a hair too small to hold properly. I glued the screw in at one end, let it dry, and then did the beads while pulling carefully on the spring so the screw wouldn't pop back out, then glued the 2nd screw into place. This worked ok to make a secure cable. The front of the upper torso:

Like the title said I finally finished my Perfect Grade Char's Zaku II. Actually I finished last week, but I didn't get around to posting some pics till now. Not too hard a kit, especially compared to the PG Zeta I already built. The only tricky things were the springs for the cables. I love it though. One thing that irked me was the lack of a clear pink molded eye. Other than that, even the heat hawk was great. Great kit. On to the pics. In the box: Parts runners laid out after painting:

While I personally don't like beer very much, this is still pretty sweet. Beermat that knows when you need a refill.

I have the Destiny HCM Pro on the way, I'll take pictures when it arrives.

Dagobah

Some pics from 2 ROTS deleted scenes are online. One is the Shaak-ti scene and the other is Yoda landing on Dagobah. Hopefully more pics surface soon from the other stuff. Shaak-ti

Freedom I

New breakthrough: Stem Cells restore feeling in paraplegic

PICTURE OF THE MONTH

This combiner pic from 4chan is great. Go go Impulse. Also, here's a lineart conversion for the Impulse that makes the Impulse pretty sweet. I like how Impulse looks normally, but this is nice. The wait is too thin for the Core Splendor though.

Nooooooooooooooo not the Spidey-clone Sweatshirt spider man

They couldn't flsh Shinn's character out as much as they should have by the sheer intrusion the Archangel crew had on this show. It was going fine before then, but as soon as the spotlight had to be shared, the Minerva's character developement went out the window. Back to Zeta again, the amount of screen time given to previous characters was nailed very well so far (I'm up to Ep. 21). Amuro had a couple episodes of doubt and then got back in his groove, but at the same time he never stole the spotlight. That's about the level of involvement Kira should have had. Athrun as a main character was fine, as he was written in clearly from the beginning. As for Destiny 49, I think theyu said in 49 that some EA remnant ships had lined up along with the Orb force. And for kalvasflam, that's exactly what I meant, sorry if I didn't make it clearer. The AA and Eternal should have taken quite a bit of damage overall. Out of all those MS not ONE Gunner Zaku could have got a good shot on either ship? Come on. Not to mention the sheer amount of Zaft vessels. Poor writing definately. Apparrently there is was even less chance of hitting the Meteors. They were by themselves even. The other ships went to the Requiem itself, and were somehow surprised when it had a beam shield. I'm not happy the more I think about it. There needs to be some pay-per-view level slugfests nest ep.

Given that we went from Ginn's with Vibrating Swords and Machine Guns to Mobile Suits with Funnels, Beam Shieds, and Ghost Trails then maybe not. Zaft had some beam weaponry, but not the small scale beam rifles initially. Both shows incorpated new tech at inhumanly unrealistic speeds. Especially Destiny. 40 Years of Universal Century technology compressed into 4 years in Cosmic Era time. That was one of the problems with CE, they incorporated all the tech in way too quick. Destiny had it right early on before they brought the Freedom in again, then it went downhill with the Freedom being SO powerful, and then bringing in the new Super 5 Gundams, and 3 seriously overpowered Doms. No way in hell Akatsuki should have taken a shot from the Tannhauser without either being destroyed or suffering SOME damage at least. He took the shot without a scratch. While nice to have Mwu get his memory back, it still pissed me off. They've even made the AA and Eternal super-ships. Neither have gotten hardly any damage so far in 49. Sandwhiched between the Zaft fleet and the Messiah they better take a pouinding next episode.

Apparrently in Spiderman Unlimited they made Brock more like Peter, just dressing more grungy or something. Thye were both smart. Maybe they'll do more like that. Topher could make a good anti-Tobey though in any case. I'm curious as to how they'll integrate both Sandman and Venom into the same movie. An odd combination, but the combo came straight from Dunst's interview. Throw in Hobgoblin or Green Goblin 2 for good measure. Pete's life will suck. Something I read said Tohper might have made a better crazy Cletus as Carnage, but I think he could pull creepy or evil off if he tries as Brock.

Thanks for all the effort in this. Reall cool. Maybe for those who want some of them you could do a series of thumbnails and we could request individual walls from that, and those that have the whole book can send you a pic of them holding the book though pm and they can get the whole batch of files zipped over ftp privately.

If Shinn and Kira tear each other up that much I'll be happy.