Lolicon

I was about to ask where the heck all those little nozzles came from, but I remembered the super packs. Nice paint job, especially the gold section of the ankle armor. No wrinkles!

It's usually pretty arbitrary as to what they decide to throw in a foil sticker for. Inexplicable stickers like Alto's visor (seeing a foil sticker for Alto's clear green visor makes me weep), the crotch, Ozma's head sensors, forward nose sensors, the green gunpod sensor, etc. Took a quick gander at the color sheet (kinda sketchy surfing Hobby Search pages at the office), but here's a few colors (my Japanese is limited)- Column 1 (first color scan, looks to be the main fuselage colors) 1. wine red 85%, clear blue 10%, clear red 5%, little bit of white 2. wine red 80%, purple (i assume that's what "sumire" is) 10%, clear blue 10% 3. purple 65%, wine red 20%, white 10%, clear red 5%

Why does Bandai make a huge sheet of decals but insist on including foil stickers for a few markings?

This is what HG did to "Rick" and "Lisa": http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/11/08/

Be careful what you wish for... People wanted to know what happened to Captain Kirk and we got... Generations. People wanted to know how Anakin became Vader and we got... the prequels. People wanted to know what happened to Neo and company, and we got... the Matrix sequels. Now (some) people want to know what happened to "Rick Hunter" and the SDF-3... based on The Shadow Chronicles, does anyone believe it's going to be satisfying in any way? Sometimes it's better not to know. I'd love to see Hikaru and gang again, but only if it's interesting and brings something new to the table. Otherwise, better leave well enough alone.

Not knowing what happened to Kirk and crew didn't hurt Star Trek: The Next Generation. Heck, I thought that Generations was a completely unnecessary movie; The Undiscovered Country was the perfect sendoff for the original crew, with the Enterprise literally flying off into the sunset. Cardinal rule of showbiz: Always leave on a high note and leave them wanting more.

I can get them to stay up, they're just not as snug or secure as I would like. They do sag slightly; I prefer them to sit higher up. I figure a little blue tack should fix that...

What part of the legs are giving you problems? I know it's very hard to get them to stay up in fighter mode, due to a lack of a locking mechanism (addressed by the Armored). I think some people installed magnets in the legs to hold them up.

Overall, I think it's a great thing that we have so many choices when it comes to Macross products, especially with Yamato's excellent toy lines and the success of Frontier. It's a great time to be a Macross fan. However... 1/72 models: Despite my bellyaching about one aspect or another of the model kits, they're great little pieces of engineering and look fantastic if you're willing to put some effort into them. I don't know where this "static non-transforming" nonsense comes from. They transform just fine; it's just those of us who have put time and effort into painting and decaling them don't want to see it scratched up by the rigors of transformation. I'd use the "it's not a toy" line but doesn't the DX also lose paint if you look at it the wrong way? 1/60 DX: One word sums up my opinion of these things: fugly. Fighter mode is passable, but battroid is absolutely fugly. They really do look like mordbidly obese old men with pants pulled up to their armpits. The jacked-up hips are the thing I notice most. The Armored DX looks like it was made by Fisher Price. The VF-27 looks promising though. 1/100 Partsformers: Was never interested in or impressed by this line. Fighter mode looked good and might've hooked me if there was a pilot figure. Battroid retains the same fugly proportions and hip placement as the DX. WHY?! One could make a case for the DX needing to compromise for the transformation, but it's inexcusable for a partsformer. Add to it the bloated price tag. DX Quarter: Is it December yet?!

I recently showed Robotech: TSC to a friend of mine who isn't really into anime but liked the 1985 Robotech episodes back in the day. Here's what he had to say: About the theme: "WTF? It's the Superman theme!" About the women: "Seven of Nine is conservative by comparison." "Don't they have back problems?" About the men: "It looks like they start every morning with a heaping bowl of anabolic protoculture." About the story: "It's a bunch of stupid crap happening to a bunch of stupid people I've never seen before and don't give a crap about." About the CG: "I would've said the CG was okay if you hadn't show me those CG clips [from Macross Frontier] earlier. About the black hole escape: "WTF is this? Robotechnobabble? Sounds even worse than Treknobabble!" About the Haydonites: "I thought you were f***ing kidding when you said they were just a floating head and shoulders with an empty cape." "They talk like a bunch of WIC Sith." About Rick Hunter: "That's not Rick Hunter." About the limited theatrical release: "They played this in theaters? People paid money to see this?" About the DVD: "Don't you f***ing leave that thing in my house."

!!! Sigh more Japan only exclusives that I'll never be able to get my hands on.

Made good use of some old Episode One figures.

Is he saying that the Robotech LAM will be so successful that it will bend time and space and retroactively eliminate the billion dollars Transformers has made for Paramount? If so, I'd be shaking in my boots too.

In the gerwalk mode shot, I just noticed that there are little tabs poking out from under the backplate. Are those possibly tabs for locking the legs in place in fighter mode? Please say it's so!

Apparently not. Clear purple seems to be impossible for some reason. There's no clear purple paint to be bought either. But wait, isn't the DX canopy molded in clear purple???

The days of Macekreing anime ended in the 80s since fans usually hate it and it costs a lot more than just a straight translation. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Macekre

I think your build is looking good, despite any problems you've had with the decals. I'm sure once the whole thing's been assembled, you won't even notice the little slipups. Besides the SMS007 snafu. I hear ya on the problematic decals. Since there's still a few weeks before the VF-27 comes out, I decided to finish sticking together my VF-25F battroid which I started nearly a year ago. This was when I wasn't really doing a whole lot of finishing work and had intended to only hastily assemble it as a proxy for the mordbidly obese DX, so it was already partially assembled; it'd look really jarring if I started painting the rest of it. Anyway, the decals for the Armored were a breeze. There are almost no areas where you have to force a decal to sit in a groove or other awkward shape and the few that did involve irregular areas were fairly mild. The only exception were the chest covers; I ended up scraping most of the decals off and just painting that section. And now back to the plain VF-25F... and a lot more decal difficulties! Much of the difficulty comes from the fact that these decals just aren't properly sized/shaped. But for some reason some of these decals just didn't want to cooperate. Like the "arrows" that sit on the neckline... they simply did not want to be moved into position, no matter how much water or setter I used; I ended up tearing on of them and having to paint part of it back in. Or the black U-shaped decal in the very center of the chest? It's not even close to being the right size. You have to paint in the edges unless you want large, white edges. Heck I'll just attach some pics and let you play "spot the decal screwup." When you're dealing with a decal that has to be forced down into a pit or groove, it helps to trim off the excess film so there's less area for liquid to be trapped under and is more easily pushed out. It's very useful for small decals that fit entirely in a recess, like the circular "bolt" decals or the sensors on the sides of the cockpit.

Though I never once criticized the placement of the DX VF-27's legs simply because it looks so much better than the craptastic VF-25, I couldn't quite put my finger on it till you brought this up. So I fired up a bunch of Frontier episodes to check it out, and you're right, the VF-27's legs do appear to connect higher up than the VF-25. The DX VF-27 actually looks fairly close to the anime and may be my first DX purchase! The DX VF-25s look like a bunch of morbidly obese old men with their pants pulled up to their armpits. The air intakes look kinda elongated on both the DX and the model. Maybe it's just the viewing angle or the way it was transformed? EDIT: I meant second DX purchase, after the Quarter.

If by "fixed" he meant they were neutered, then yes, Macek was being 100% truthful.

You know what else is "sturdy"? A brick. A brick is also more useful and better engineered, but I wouldn't pay $200 for one either. Then again, the DX looks exactly like the 1/72 model, so I don't know why anyone is complaining.

I get dirty looks when I wear my "Focker Special" shirt.

What's a "normal" Macross fan? Are they similar to "normal" Robotech fans? ...does he not know that Robotech is just hacked up "jap crap?"

Nyan Nyan Ranka is out. Can't wait to get mine. http://www.foobarbaz.jp/figure/review2009/...ranka_nyannyan/

We jumped ship and became Macross fans exclusively. Even rats know when to abandon a sinking ship.

Nothing wrong with a singing loli with green hair. Penguin's is the first coherent and somewhat compelling reason I've ever read as to why people would even like Robotech. I too prefer story arcs that deal with the consequences of peoples' actions. Compare a fairly serialized show like Deep Space Nine to the episodic nature of The Next Generation or Voyager, which have very little episode to episode continuity. They're always in the Bajoran sector and anything that happens reverberates in later episodes; they can't just warp away to the next alien of the week. But in the case of Robotech, I agree that the characters became diluted and uninteresting in later productions. Like the cast of Voyager, they became cardboard cutouts of human beings. Kawamori decided against having Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay in any future productions because he felt their stories had been told, their arcs completed, and showing them again would just be extraneous and would add nothing new or interesting. In short: the Robotech universe became dull and generic after "The Macross Saga." Any wonder why it's the most popular part of Robotech? Oh, and I read all the McKinney novels years ago, and I thought they were the best part of Robotech. ("Best" being a relative term, of course.)