Chronocidal

Probably more that they just completely missed this part. Whether that will look any better is still up for grabs though, since it's just dropping the pod even lower. Plus, Bandai didn't make the lower fin under the barrel retract like Yamato's version did. But hey, not even Bandai could remember to unfold that gunpod for some of the poses in the instructions.

Yeah, so, I'm not trusting that example. That's not being pushed down by the crotch plate, it's not even touching when you view it from the front. I think that's mostly just user error not understanding how to mount the gun so it doesn't drag. Not to take all of the blame away from Bandai though, the real problem (on this and the YF-19) is that they expected a nearly vertical grip mounting point to somehow support an angled grip without the gun also tilting downward the same amount. The whole issue for both versions could have been fixed if they just.. you know.. planned. It does look like they've attempted to address this with the Fire Valk, by making the gunpod handle rotate, but we'll have to wait and see how effective it is. That display though.. that honestly looks like they purposefully mounted it as droopy as physically possible. And I'm not one to explicitly trust Bandai not to lie with its pictures, but the single picture in the instructions showing the mounted gunpod puts it at no worse a position than the YF-19 or Yamato version. Over time, I've managed to get my DX YF-19s to display it very nearly level. Honestly, the main issue? It's that blasted connection they added so the shield locks into the torso. I hate to say this, but just like MOST of their Macross products, Bandai is absolutely terrible at understanding the necessary tolerances for the parts they design themselves, and how they have to fit together. They have never understood the complexities of how to get arms and legs to mesh well in that configuration. There's never enough room for the parts they design to fit the way they're intended, and it just leads to everything being off-kilter. In the case of the YF-19, they incorrectly toleranced the distance the arms need to attach to the shield and have it lock in correctly on the rear of the fighter. What that means is that the when the shield is attached, it rotates the lower arms upward, because the shield is pulling forward on the upper surface. That, in turn, means the gunpod is forever pointed downward. It's really easy to fix though. Detach the shield, and the arms and gunpod line up perfectly fine. All you would really need to do is lengthen the shield a few millimeters, and the issue would be gone. In the YF-19's case, you know what I did? I yanked out the attached neck cover. Leaving that structure out allows the shield to flex a bit more, letting the arms settle into a level position, and leveling the gunpod completely (you know.. aside from the bent barrel, because they still mounted an angled grip in a vertical arm slot ). I don't know if the shield on the Fire Valk is attached in the same way, and I doubt it can be, because of the shoulder flaps, but the way to get the gunpod level is probably going to depend on slightly detaching the shield from the arms to let the arms sag a little, and drop the rear of the gunpod lower.

Yeah, that's just the natural impact of the insane hip joint Bandai developed. It gives a pretty good range of motion, but holy cow does the entire mechanism of the hips scare me from all the tiny parts. Edit; Also, as a preemptive safety measure, you may want to loosen the screws in the hip joints for ease of use. The YF-19s always came insanely tight, and I know of at least a couple instances where it led to the plastic parts breaking around the screws. I can only hope that the mechanism is similar enough to be able to loosen it the same way this time around.

I like the idea, but I don't think any re-write of the connective tissue between 7 and 9 could ever actually make either of those movies work in a "cohesive" way in the first place. Nothing about the setting of the sequels works from the foundations upward, so you can't really rebuild anything without nuking it to bedrock level first. I can't disagree that there was potential in some of the ideas they explored, but it was all built on nonsense that falls apart if you think about any aspect of it for more than 5 seconds.

Yeah, it's painfully obvious how much HLJ is overcharging on this. Just straight up 30%. To ship just the VF-19 with FedEx would total about $130, with a rough breakdown of $50 actual shipping, $75 duties, and $5 extra handling whatever. I've got until April to ship it, so it's staying there for the foreseeable future. I'll see how much AE wants to charge me to ship it along with my HMR VF-19P, but I am still not keen on using DHL for anything.

Just got one copy dropped into my HLJ warehouse, so it gets to sit there for a while while they sort out shipping.

Same for the intakes, but those shoulder panels were always intended to be behind the shoulders, so it'd just be going directly against the original animation. Interesting though, the new photos just make it even more clear that there was some intensive retouching of those early product previews. The panels divisions are all clearly visible in the instruction manual, when they looked almost completely scrubbed out on the product site. I kind of wish they had managed this sort of neck cover on the YF-19, but I'm not sure yet whether I like the collar sticking up behind the head. Hopefully it can stow deeper than their preview images have shown.

I mean, there's probably no reason they couldn't use those holes to help anchor the sound booster, but judging by the HMR (and the Yamato VF-19s for that matter) the holes aren't in the right spot for the VF-19P fins anyhow. I am hoping the final product isn't so sloppily painted though. I guess they wanted those spots to look like thrusters or something, but they couldn't even get the holes painted black around the inside.

Will give them credit, I think I do like the proportions of this one's nose section better than the Yamarcadia (better shape of the neck/LEX, and it makes the nose look longer), but this thing looks like a genuine frankenvalk. There is so much Yamarcadia DNA here, I don't know what to properly call it. So much of this looks directly copied, it's kind of insane. The landing gear look straight up identical (minus the paint, of course ). I think they did a bit better with the knee extension, but then again, the Yamarcadia didn't really need the sliding covers for the Fire Valk, just the YF-19. Bring on the Yamcadai DX! Though, moreso, bring on the rest of the VF-19 series. I'm still waiting for someone to make a white and black VF-19F.

Honestly, it's probably more about the licensing, like so many other things currently driving the franchise. They seem to be prioritizing designs they can freely sell to anyone, rather than just the local fanbase. Or from a different angle, they might not be able to get the licenses to make those specific characters. We haven't seen anything from the other pre-Frontier series either, I think. I still want an actual Sheryl valk though.

Honestly.. if we're going with Palpatine surviving, there's no reason Ben didn't. After all, he just fell over and disappeared. Not like he was dropped down a hole into a reactor that exploded, or anything.

Boy I hope Jazwares reconsiders their packaging for the Tie Defenders in the future. Good thing I picked up a pair. I was only able to pull together three (mostly) un-warped wing panels between the two. Seriously, those plastic molds had a death grip on the ships, I had to cut them out with my sprue clippers.

Dunno if this is on anyone's radar, but apparently MR got the molds to the old Diamond Select phaser and communicator. Not sure whether it's missing any major functions, but I was not expecting the price to be anything this reasonable, and I just decided to order one on impulse. https://www.masterreplicas.com/collections/star-trek/products/star-trek-phaser-type-2-2266-69

Yeah, it's kind of a natural progression to the active camo/paint they had in Delta. I don't think we saw anything like it in Frontier on a valk (unless you want to count Battle Galaxy ), but they obviously can project holograms over pretty much anything they like at this point.