Hiriyu

I recently picked up one of these KOs. Same QC issues everybody else has mentioned upthread - some overly tight joints, tolerances off in other ways affecting general fit & finish, and on mine the right hand trigger finger was glued solid at the hinge.  Did some minor disassembly and cleanup to fix some of the worst of it, and on the whole it's not terrible. For a VF-1S in Strike dress for less than the cost of a used Yammie/Arcadia, I'm happy enough with it.

Paint on the 1S is non-premium, but the Strike packs were fully marked with stickers included for the skull roundels. Also grabbed the clear option parts for the extra $12.  I do like all of the extra option parts that came with the basic valk: neck cover, pilot seat equipped neck cover, side fillers, and for whatever reason, two sets of fixed-pose TV hands.

Cheers, Stampeed Valkyrie. I'm very enthused to get to follow along with your project! The Dynamo cab is really a great basis for it. Please keep the updates coming.

On the control panel, I don't think the swiss cheese factor is all that bad - the buttons don't need a ton more local support than a plexi overlay will provide on it's own, and it looks like you've still got some metal under them. I like your idea to shift the controls over to the right a bit and to tighten up the button spacing. I'd see how much panel flex you get with the sticks mounted where you've projected them in those large openings - I'll bet it works out fine with the existing panel.

Aero Fighters is a fun shmup in it's own right, have you tried running that pcb too?

One of the regulars over at BYOAC did a dedicated SSFM conversion with his own art some years back and documented the build in this thread. Same unit and builder appears in the YT video below.  Given that you're already launching into your own project you've probably already found Yotsuya's example on the web, but figured it was worth posting just in case you hadn't. Like you, he was not that impressed by the official conversion kit art materials.

RIP Lt. Savik

Very sad. I had been unaware of Kirstie's battle with cancer. I loved her roles in Star Trek and Cheers.

@ChristopherB  Full disclosure: I do not own any of these anymore, and I think we may have spoken about them in the past. I had a good start on collecting the Heavy Weapons series, but ended up with only six of the kits. At that point the Hikaru and Roy 3-mode kits were the ones I was really after. There was a period during which I just couldn't find any of them, and gradually lost vigilance in the search. That's why I'm so impressed by the complete collection of these you've assembled - really great job, which I know took some dedication!

Photos of my old ARII 1/100 HEWAT collection, such as it was   Also some miscellaneous other ARII 1/100 Valkyrie kits.

Damn. RIP, Ray. His performance in Something Wild punched a hole through my pysche as a teen; that movie shocked me. He played probably the first truly sociopathic character I'd ever seen (or had at least understood) in media, and made me realize that they exist in real life too. He was a great talent.

Aw man. Dude was a part of the tapestry, really enjoyed his movies. Time Rider haha... He had the best line of the movie in The Right Stuff, but I won't repeat it here 😐

RIP Fred.

On 8/6/2021 at 9:18 PM, ChristopherB said:

These kits along with the Arii Silver Box Set are the basis for the Bandai 1/100 variable kits.  Set of 10 (M1 - M10) quite rare and took me a long time to complete the set since they're almost 40 years old.  Finding boxes in good condition and with complete unopened packages, with the Max versions being the hardest.

M1 - M4: (3) mode variable
M5 - M8: (2) mode variable (Valkyrie & Gerwalk)
M9 & M10: Battroid mode

Really lovely box art, my favorites being the (3) Max.  Which ones do you like?

 

Apologies for the late entry here.

Really incredible ChristopherB!. Good show man. I had a good number of those kits (will have to see if I can dig up the picture), but you've really done the impossible here. I just love the packaging and artwork of these kits, and they were fun to build too. Mind's blown that you managed to track them all down!

That's a really great-looking model. Thanks for the backstory and background info on it, much appreciated! I think I remember the OG Shuttle set you mention, although I think it came on the scene a while after my prime building years (Classic Space and Expert Builder were my jam, up to about 1985). Here's to hoping that your new parts arrive in a timely manner and that you share lots of photos from your build 😀 👍

4 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Pretty cute little mech for a quick build!  Impressive how it came out with such a limited selection of parts to use.

Hah, thanks! Kawamori and Miyatake-san are great teachers. I had enough fun on that little guy that I picked up another set today after work, a Technic McLaren Senna GTR which was on sale at Target. I was big into Lego until my teen years, so it'll be fun to reconnect a bit with the hobby.

Very impressive stuff on your Shuttle system! Is it a derivative of an official set, or something that you or other fans have designed? (Apologies, I'm a bit out of touch with the modern Lego ecosystems.) Looking forward to seeing what you do with the Orbiter!

This is a silly little VF-1 Armored Valkyrie-inspired poseable mech I built from the #30343 McLaren Elva polybag set. I haven't really built anything from Lego in about 35 years, but had this set kicking around as a stocking stuffer from last Christmas. Decided to see what sort of mech I could come up with using the pretty limited parts selection from that set, and this is the result. Janky as all hell, but pretty fun too

I was stoked to find out that my local (Big Island, HI) Regal theater will have a showing, and I will definitely be there. It could be dubbed in Swahili for all I care - for me, it's about being able to legally support the franchise. I already own the movie on disc and have a home theater so it's not necessarily all about the actual in-theater experience; rather to help demonstrate that there is a market here.

I went to this theater about a week ago for a different movie, and they were showing the preview for M+ in the lobby. It was a real trip to walk in and have Information High greeting me from the PA system.

That is such terrible news. Absolutely tragic.

Not necessarily the weirdest place as the series features lots of Macross & Studio Nue cameos, but Episode 9 of Orguss features the salvaging of a VF-1J or VF-1D from an old battlefield. There's also a Studio Nue Chimera sitting on a table aboard the Glomar in the scene immediately preceding it.

Those are absolutely, positively, not from Orguss.

Very cool, Fifbeat! Congrats on seeing your collection to completion after all this time.

I had a small army of the Orgroids, an Olson, Nikick, Ovelon Gazzette, and SDF-1 back in the day. The Ovelon and SDF-1 were the boxed KO's which Glane posted previously (the silver/white box versions), and I think I remember picking them up at a mall department store circa 1985. The SDF-1 had yellow booms with blue arms, and it was always an object of some lament for me that not only could you not put the booms on in the correct orientation in cruiser mode, but that they were the wrong color to boot

I never picked up any of the Converters or KO Henkei Valkyries although they were ubiquitous in SoCal in the '80s, as I already had a 1/100 Taka bootleg which I judged as being superior. The Henkei KOs I remember seeing around most frequently were boxed versions amusingly branded as 'Battroid Walkyrie'.

These are super cool, really enjoyed seeing them. The cartoon sequences are hilarious and I really dig the SD "lineart"

Are there (m)any differences in the foam trays and inserts between the Takatoku/Matsushiro/Bandai valk releases? For instance, was the tray altered for the snub-nosed valks, or was it continued as originally sculpted for the Takatokus?

9 hours ago, Perxion said:

Hello Friends, come and check out my new YouTube video MOSPEADA OPENING REMASTERED (Full HD) 

It premieres in 9 hours. It will help me a lot if you share and like my video. 

I really hope you enjoy it. 

Take care. 

 

Just watched your Remastered OP and really loved it. Wonderful artwork and animation, and the use of cover versions of the original songs performed by your friends is just awesome. 10/10

Thank you for your efforts, and for sharing them with us!

Great stuff as always, JVM. Thanks for taking the time to document and share all of these booklets! I love and adore all of the wonderful Toshio Suzuki artwork which adorned many of the IMAI and ARII boxes.

I used to collect the ARII 1/100 kit line, and it's interesting to note that what is labeled as a VF-1C head in the lineart in booklet #0 is what ARII actually molded and supplied in their early VF-1D fighter mode and two-mode kits, and bears a strong resemblance to Kawamori's pre-production VF-1D head. Not so surprising, that, but it is somewhat interesting to see it labeled as a "C" variant here!

I posted a scan of the weird Orguss/VF-1S hybrid from Orguss booklet #7 here about 15 years ago and people totally freaked So much weird and wonderful stuff from the period in these books.

10 hours ago, danth said:

Seriously, how has nobody else broken a finger on this thing? How do you fold it up in the forearm and not crush it against the inner arm or slice off fingers with the vertical stab?

Disclaimer: I don't own a Sentinel Legioss, so this may not apply due to possible peculiarities in its transformation. From my ownership of the Toynami Legioii I learned to basically transform everything else (bicep/forearm collapse, tailfins, etc) prior to stowing the hands. When everything else is already in place it only became necessary to pose the fingers such that they could fit into the hand cavity in the forearm and be able to close the arm cover without resistance. Never had a broken hand on any of the Toynamis while following that procedure, even though those hands were notorious for breakage and their apparent construction from dessicated artificial cheese spread.

No Way Dude! Face the Music was most excellent and I enjoyed it very much. I went in with low expectations but an open mind, and what I found was an unexpectedly funny film with great feel-good ambience, which recalls why I loved the original. No, it's probably not as good as the original, but if you find yourself making up reasons to be upset about a freaking Bill & Ted movie I suspect that you may have missed the point. It's all about irreverent, goofy fun. Don't try to look any deeper than that.

Highlights for me were how awesomely Keanu and Alex played their d*ckwad future-us's (& Dave Grohl, hahahaha), the various tributes to George Carlin's Rufus (sniff, miss you George), and Bill & Ted's daughters were also great. There were lots of laugh-out-loud moments for me with callbacks to the original movies, and I think that the overall message of the movie is just as relevant and true now as it was in 1988: Be excellent to each other, and, PARTY ON DUDES!

...Houquet

WRT a Sentinal Tread, I think a partsforming boom coupled with a fold down panel that integrates into the gap at the back of the Legioss' calves could result in a pretty secure connection. Make the calve lock panel do double duty as part of the Tread's cockpit transformation.

I'd love to see a functional origami connection boom, but agree that it's not very likely considering the space available in the Tread's undercarriage.

1/18 BMWs? I'm in.