QuinJester

Annoying and baffling though the color differences may be, I don't intend to display my Luca without armor so it'll be a minor niggle in my eyes. As long as the joints are as nicely tight and the groin lock is as tight as my Michel I'll be happy. Taking the photos with Alto reminded me how much I had abused him His joints just aren't as tight as they used to be and he was most definitely not as well behaved as Michel was while wearing that armor. Hopefully Bandai will put out a deluxe set with Alto and armor at a later date and I'll use my current alto as my "abuse and play" copy.

I regret nothing.

Despite the name "water slide" decals, I would really not recommend using water to apply them. Invest in some micro-sol decal solvent. It'll practically melt your decals to the body of your valk, and with a nice clearcoating will make them look like they were painted on instead of applied.

I'd definitely recommend it. Mine is super tight, really well fitting, and it just looks ... well. You can see how it looks. I most certainly like it more than my Alto. There may be subtly discernable coloration differences on my Michel, but I'm blowed if I can see them under my daylight-lit apartment. Blue is beautiful! EDIT: I checked the two different hip guns on my Michel. They're both the same molded blue color. How odd. Maybe there were different batches of parts runs that had variant blue levels?

... and a full spread of Michel in his armor, too:

<distracts everyone from arguing with pictures>

Uh. What? On my own Michel, the only armor part that's remotely loose is the hip covers, everything else locks great if you get it locked in properly. The chest piece, yes, will flop around, but only if you don't actually put it all the way on. The side covers will be a little knock-able-off-able, but only if you don't get them pressed in hard enough. The boosters are rock solid if you get them pressed down properly over the wing root and get the alignment pin into position on the forward spike. Then again, maybe I just happen to have one with magically better QC than everyone else . Another MW staple!

I had a 25th anniversary YF-19 and I ended up returning it. The hip swivels were so loose it couldn't stand in Gerwalk. Everything else about it was better than the first-run YF-19 I bought later, though. Hopefully the swivel was an isolated case.

I'm going to go ahead and interject some positivity and say that, having opened my Michel, it's so nice. My few nitpicks with my Alto were thus: - The grey plate that the head rests on didn't really lock very well into the shoulders - the waist disconnected kind of easily - The hip pegs didn't seem to want to go all the way in when in fighter mode, leaving them slightly unpegged from the body. - I had to glue all the handguards to the hands. Every one of these is fixed on my VF-25G. On top of that, the hips are tighter, the shoulders are a tad looser and easier to move (and both of the same stiffness), and the wrists are much tighter. My fast packs lock on very nicely, with the wing thrusters holding in place as they should. If people are experiencing sag, check to make sure that the little peg that sticks out on the inside of the thruster is going into place in the indentation on the ring root; mine didn't stay put until I fiddled with it a bit and found the sweet spot for this. The hip guards: Yes, they're a little loose. I'd rank them as being about on par with my 1/60 YF-19 for obnoxiousness; they don't fall off on their own, or even when I'm moving the figure around, but they almost never stay put if I try to transform the figure or adjust the legs too much. Overall, not as bad as I thought from listening to some reports and with a bit of nail polish (or a hair dryer and a bit of a squeeze to make it put a bit more pressure on the outside edges) I can imagine it being rock solid. They lock on about the same on my Alto, as an FYI. No better, no worse. My only real "meh" point on it is the gun, whose fins are a bit too fiddly for my taste. I echo earlier sentiments that I wish Kawamori had just given Michel a nice BFG and not had all of these awkward spiny bits all over his gun Damn does it look nice though. Stands like a dream in battroid mode, looks absolutely badass in fighter mode. Haven't given gerwalk a try yet, but it's my least favorite mode on the VF-25 so I'm in no hurry Michel has rekindled my love for this mold. I'll definitely be keeping my Luca preorder. EDIT: oh, and the groin guard doesn't have to be removed to transform at all. Fits just fine.

Psh. You just undermined your entire argument. POSTER BLOCKED AND IGNORED! In other news, my Michel just arrived and is sitting under my work desk. We'll see how mine holds up when I bust it out tonight. I had good luck with my Alto as far as groin connections and such went. Hopefully this trend will continue.

Discussion and panic are not mutually exclusive, and right now there's only one person who can provide any first hand evidence to base any such discussion on. All the rest of us can do is suppose and comment, and there's certainly people panicking, like this asshat right here: You'd better believe that I'm panicking . And I'm not alone.

To be fair, one person is pointing out a flaw, and the rest of us are, in fact, panicking. It's the MW Way.

.... I've been eagerly anticipating the Lucca version and am a big fan of the DX, but if it has a heterochromia thing going on, I may seriously have to rethink my decision to get one. Maybe it's a good thing that my Michel came into stock and shipped out first :/

With revised shoulders and such unique sculpt differences, I don't think I'll be able to pass on this one like I did the VF-1D. It's just so funky.

Disgustingly beautiful. I just wonder where I'll make space to put it. I only Just got a new set of shelves and I have limited amounts of wall space. I don't know if I can fit another set in around my apartmnent, but with all the upcoming DX's I may have... urgh...

Knowing Eriku, sheer force of will.

Got my payment request for Michel thismorning. No word on Luca, yet.

Hot Toys (who normally make 1/6 figures) made a set of blind-boxed Appleseed small-scale trading figs from ExMachina, which if you got a full set included parts to "build your own" Landmate. It's a pretty awesome figure, though it kind of sucks that you have to pay $130 and buy doubles of a bunch of figures your probably don't want to get it. FYI Big Bad toy Store still has the full sets available. The little figures are actually really awesome too. Again, just kind of sucks that you have to end up with doubles of them all.

High resolution of the prototype DX Ozma Armor.... pretty. You can see all the missiles inside the missile pods.

It's far more likely that the modifications to Michel and Luca's fighters will be to support the Fold booster and Radome, respectively. I doubt it'll be for the armor. Since Bandai is now retooling the molds for the fighters, that means future versions of Alto and Ozmoa will also have the same holes, even if they wont be mounting the radome or booster. That's probably all it is. But, you know, mountains, molehills, yadda yadda yadda.

The swivel is RIDICULOUSLY stiff, but it's there. The headlights DO flip. Also, I think somewhere an alternate universe is exploding due to a Toynami release having better QC than it's japanese counterpart, vis-a-vis the head ball joint. The heads joints are perfect on my Toynami Ride Armor.

I got my Toynami Ride Armor and was quite happy to note that they didn't change the sticker on the base, so it still says Mospeada. Overall thoughts; it's a REALLY cleverly engineered (almost OVER engineered, really) piece, but damn if the fabric doesn't suck on it. Speaking as someone who's collected a number of 1/6 figures and other cloth clad figs, it's extremely low quality stuff and suffers from some serious frayed edges and sub-par sewing. I may look into either ripping it all out or replacing it with some sewed fabric of my own. Other than that, it's a ridiculously awesome piece. Very heavy due to the sheer mass of plastic from all the movie parts. No hollow plastic components on this guy... there's just too many moving parts for that. So heavy it can't really stand well on its own, but that's about par for the course for ride armors, I think Totally worth picking up. Just wish the fabric wasn't so poorly done.

That's the new generic Yamato stand that they're releasing; I don't believe the VF-11 is going to actually come with it though.

For the most part, this is true, but the part that's broken in this case could easily have had more substantial plastic thickness. Who knows, maybe it was just the grade of plastic they used. Hopefully in the future if they do any repaints they'll use a slightly more resilient mix of plastic. The plastic on the new V2 VF-1's feels much stronger and more sturdy than the stuff they used on the YF-19 and 1/48