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Chronocidal

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Everything posted by Chronocidal

  1. Chronocidal
    I might grab another pair of missile sets to future-proof the eventual releases Bandai unveils.
  2. Chronocidal
    I actually spent a good portion of my lunchbreak simultaneously cringing and laughing til I cried as I realized just how fitting that analogy is.
  3. Chronocidal
    I've heard this point made elsewhere, and I forget who summarized it, but they compared Disney's acquisition of both Marvel and Pixar to the Lucasfilm deal. The huge difference to both of those situations was that they pulled an existing production pipeline along with the IP. Lucasfilm didn't have much of that, at least as far as the movies went, so they had no existing experience or proven talent to fall back on. If they wanted to stay true to the franchise, they should have been pulling from the people who already had both feet in the pool (or in Filoni's case, practically growing gills). To make a slightly dated comparison (and ignoring the lootbox fiasco), it's the same issue I felt EA had rebooting the Battlefront games. Where the originals actually felt like LucasArts properties with a unique gameplay feel to them, the EA BF games wound up feeling like Star Wars mods for whatever current Call of Duty or Battlefield game they were working on. If you want a successful organ transplant, you use tissue from someone who shares some of the same DNA. If you want something to feel like it belongs in an existing universe, you pull from talent with previous experience in that universe.
  4. Chronocidal
    All joking aside, I'm waiting to hear more about later episodes, but so far, it's sounding like this show is off to a pretty good start.
  5. Chronocidal
    I never actually thought of it before, but the way you phrased this had a big old lightbulb appear over my head. Robotech is literally the Human Centipede of anime.
  6. Chronocidal
    But.. the tail hangs out and doesn't interfere with anything, and the hinge isn't a double fold like the YF-19's rudder. Besides, why would they need to fold part of the tail smaller? The biggest part doesn't change any. I think that was also me, saying it looked like they glued a 1/72 nose on a 1/48 back end. I actually don't think the tails are too big, I think the arms are just far too small. It might just be the diameter (and the freaking tiny hands aren't helping at all), but I'm also looking at that line art, and thinking that while the hands do reach the knees, the angle of those arms isn't the same. The line art pic has the arms in a much more aggressive pose, angled both outwards and forwards. The elbows on the Bandai display don't look bent forward at all. Maybe a better pose would help, because right now they just look whimpy and limp.
  7. Chronocidal
    Wait... you got replacement legs with the same problem as the originals?
  8. Chronocidal
    See, no, this doesn't need to be "let go." If your customer support department is making promises, and you aren't fulfilling them, that's a nasty black mark on your reputation. I do apologize because I didn't mean to sound like I was going to be raking them over the coals or anything. Whether I need the spare parts or not, if I don't receive them, I'm going to be contacting them to let them know they weren't included, because I can quote the email promising me they would be sent. I don't mean to be harsh or unfair. HLJ has built up a very good reputation for customer service here (almost literally the only retailer who will even give US customers the time of day if their product has an issue), and I don't want them to let that get tarnished. If there's a disconnect between their email support and their shipping, they deserve to be made aware, and given a chance to redress it. Someone already reported that they received a faulty product, and didn't receive the spare parts they were promised. Whether that turns out to be a fluke or a common problem remains to be seen.
  9. Chronocidal
    For lying? They told me directly in an email that they would be included. If I don't wind up needing them myself, that'll be me getting a lucky break. That doesn't mean they get to shirk their obligation to do what they told me they would do. If they had told me they were checking the legs personally, that's different, but they didn't say that. They still could include a note in the package that they checked it, and I'll be happy to call it good, since they did the necessary work. I won't find out for a couple days, since the package just hit LAX customs, but I'll be able to confirm then whether they followed through.
  10. Chronocidal
    Heh.. I just had them ship my Ivanov along with a PF Roy as well. I guess we'll see what happens when it arrives. If I don't get the parts, and my ankles are backwards, I'm going to be asking them to ship the parts out for free immediately, to back up their previous emails. If I happen to get the right ankles, and don't receive the parts, I'm not going to be demanding they ship one out, but I'm absolutely going to call them out on the email saying they would be included. That's just messed up.
  11. Chronocidal
    This really is the big question. What's the point of a clear part if you're not allowed to manually mask off windows and lights? I guess you could theoretically treat the clear parts as light-piping, but the lighting kit isn't set up that way, and relies on light reflected from the interior to leak out of the ship like a sieve. There's really no light directed into the clear parts that way. I think the problem is just that they got ahead of themselves, and produced the entire kit with pre-drilled holes. They should have half-molded the drill points on the inside, and left the plastic solid. Since they didn't do that, what we're left with is a ship pre-drilled for fibers that doesn't include any, and half a kit's worth of useless transparent plastic that's only useful if you want to add more lights to the exterior of the ship. In fact.. the guide included in the kit itself mentions literally filling in the holes in the clear parts with some other material... They basically designed this kit to be modified, not built out of the box. The entire instruction set mentions using fiber optics, but then tells you to go buy them separately. The guide goes through extensive instructions on how to modify the kit, not how to build it with the included parts.
  12. Chronocidal
    I don't think Yamato's engines were too small though. Bandai has bulked them up so much to make room for the legs underneath them. Far as the arms go, yes, they're just way too short. This is one of those changes they made that actually hurts every mode, for no discernible reason. The arms look terrible in battroid because they're too short and skinny, and they look bad in fighter for moving the tails too far forward. What's worse is that it looks like there should be plenty of room to stretch them out, because of all the extra back end they added to the fighter mode. It's really kind of impossible to know what they're going for. As much as I want them to make significant changes to the whole design before actually releasing it, I'm not getting my hopes up, since the product looks so finished.
  13. Chronocidal
    So, I actually sprung for the lighting set version since it was on sale at Amazon, and only came out to about $20 more, I think. Honestly.. in hindsight, I appreciate the lighting kit being included, but I'm still scratching my head over what they actually were thinking with the kit designs. To clarify, the lit version comes in an insanely large box, and contains extra sprues that duplicate a large portion of the kit in clear plastic.... with the holes still drilled in them.. Like.. ok, I get it, they didn't want to make two copies of the mold.. but that kind of defeats the purpose of the clear plastic in the first place, and if you want to make those parts look like they have actual windows, you'll have to literally plug all of the holes so the plastic looks consistent. They really needed to make two versions, both with and without holes, because without lights, the kit just looks like Swiss cheese. Aside from that though, I'm disappointed that all they did is drill circular holes all over the place. Maybe they're following the pattern of lights used on the actual model, which is fair, but I would have loved if they actually cut out windows in the plastic, rather than hundreds of pinholes. Maybe they just expected people to use fiber optics? Hard to say. I'm honestly tempted to go find some kind of micro-file that I can use on all those holes and cut out square corners. I can't really be too negative about it though, it's a beautiful kit, and should be a really fun build. While it's not huge, I think the size is pretty good for a nice shelf display, which I'm perfectly okay with.
  14. Chronocidal
    As I'm thinking about this design, and what bothers me about it, I'm hitting this weird crossover point between accuracy and aesthetics. For comparison purposes, I'm thinking of the old and new BSG Colonial Viper. I love both designs. Is the updated MkII Viper accurate to the classic? Not in the slightest! But I still love the way it looks, because it's a good design. Bandai seems like it has managed to pull off the opposite. For all the functionality they may have cooked into the design, I just don't think it looks good in any mode. It looks like they sacrificed the aesthetics of both fighter and battroid for the sole purpose of cramming those massive legs in, and every mode is worse off for it. If they're going to diverge from the lineart, that's fine, and I can appreciate the effort, but if they're going to make changes that make the whole thing ugly, I'd rather they diverge even farther from the lineart to make something that looks better as a whole.
  15. Chronocidal

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    So, just got my second set of armored parts, and yes, it's ridiculous, but these do fit. Figure it's poetic justice to make up for the fact that Chuck never got a gunpod.
  16. Chronocidal
    I mean, if it makes it fun to pose, that's great, but at some point you have to address the aesthetics, or it's going to be shoved in a corner and forgotten for being an incredibly dynamic turd. Right now, it looks like their thought process was, "If we ignore how the rest of the plane and battroid look, we can actually give it some screen-accurate legs!"
  17. Chronocidal
    Forgive me for the confusion, but I have to ask what you mean by this. We're comparing it to lineart that, for the most part, Kawamori drew. The big differences we're all pointing out are between how it was drawn both on-screen and in the lineart, and how Bandai has interpreted it. It's entirely possible that Kawamori is flip-flopping on how he wants it to look, but to say that the art that Kawamori himself drew isn't how he wanted it to look is a bit goofy. Also keep in mind that, historically, Kawamori doesn't appear to really have that much input on final designs. If Bandai is prioritizing the battroid mode, then they had better beef up those spaghetti arms before the Yamato sucker punches the Bandai version and steals all its lunch money. Literally the only improvement I see on the Bandai version is the legs. That's it. Otherwise, the battroid looks just as misproportioned as the fighter mode. What that comes off as is basically sacrificing every other aspect of both battroid and fighter to get bigger legs in. That's a sucky compromise in my book, and I absolutely think they could balance the sacrifices better to improve the rest of the valk, even if it means slightly shrinking the legs. As it is now, I'm considering buying a second Yamato to slap the Bandai legs on, and just never transform it out of battroid.
  18. Chronocidal
    Someone just linked me this. Clearly it's time to patch in the Super Sylph.
  19. Chronocidal
    I imagine yeah, it'll help a bit, but the whole design is just really front-loaded, like someone grabbed the midbody and yanked it toward the nose.
  20. Chronocidal
    You know what is amusing to me.. No one seems to be able to get the shape of the tails right. They're clipped, MiG-style. Yamato kinda skimped on the angle, but Bandai's flat out ignoring it, which is all the more ridiculous when you remember that the tails contribute absolutely zero influence to the transformation. They hang out on the arms and do literally nothing. Also, kind of painful that they literally cut the rudder in half. I have no idea why they even bothered to include those, but again, the tails have no bearing on anything else on the design, so why not do them correctly? Honestly.. the Bandai one just looks all kinds of mis-proportioned. It's go so much junk in the trunk, it throws the entire rest of the plane out of scale. That's like a 1/48th backend on a 1/72 front. It's not helping that the angle of that "side view" isn't straight-on though. I'll be interested to see a dead even comparison.
  21. Chronocidal
    Absolutely, and the beauty of it really is that if you don't like something, changing it could not be easier. Everything is customizable from the ground up, so if you think something looks better, you can just do it!
  22. Chronocidal
    Where's his "drunk" face? Or would that just be in the DYRL version?
  23. Chronocidal
    I think... while the shape of it is really good, I'm not liking the cockpit profile. I know they're pretty limited, but the shape of the window they wound up using doesn't flow right to me. But eh, I'll still try and snag one. That's still the best movie batmobile design.
  24. Chronocidal
    Honestly, I cannot believe they didn't remove that stupid spring-loaded feature when they remodeled the Tie body years back. Just what every collector wants.. a model that shoots pieces off all by itself.
  25. Chronocidal
    You'd think with all the space Bandai gave in the sides of the back end, they could have crammed in some arms that don't look so doggone whimpy. I can get used to the thicker exhausts, but the arms and canopy shape still throw me quite a bit. Guess we'll see. Not going to kid myself and say I won't try to get at least a pair, but I'll be a lot happier if they manage to figure those points out. As it stands now.. Honestly, I feel like the Yammie is a better overall shape in both fighter and battroid. The only thing the Bandai has going for it is the legs.. maybe I'll just do a leg transplant to a Yamato version, and fulfill the original Omega Pants Initiative.
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