Chronocidal
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I would vote for this sort of approach as well, making an exterior part that mounts the landing gear doors and gear themselves. While there may not be room inside the leg for a full landing gear well, you could make a piece that attaches to the underside, and just hides the lack of landing gear wells from any casual observers. You'd have a lot more surface to support the gear if you used the entire size of the gear bay, instead of just mounting the bare gear strut. Bandai did the same type of thing with their original Hi-Metal VF-19s, and didn't include landing gear initially, but later sold a display base with stationary gear that the plane rested on, acting like pedestals.
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So, are they going to cheap out again, and only offer stickers for all of them? Frankly speaking, those sculpts look fairly terrible, especially the VF-25. Misshapen, under-detailed for the size, and just plain off-model. Have to agree though, the idea of just making the noses as a display piece for pilot figures makes a bit more sense. On the other hand, I'd be all over a 31A or YF-19 kit.
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See, I'm really torn about the above, because while I'm frustrated by the lack of a coherent set of rules governing the way things work, I'm also fully on-board with the plot as a whole. I think it was an amazing ride, and a fitting end to all the build-up of the past movies. Cap's ending was exactly what I was hoping for, honestly, from even before Infinity War. The other big finale was literally ten years in the making, and after re-watching a few of the previous movies, you can tell it's what they had planned from long ago. The directors have even said as much. I just wish they had been a bit more consistent and clear about what's actually involved in tying up all the loose ends. To quote Mordo, "The bill comes due." I think the haphazard treatment of the universe in this film is absolutely going to take the next ten years of movies to actually unscrew.
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So I'll spoiler this for now, but I'm expecting the news to leak out fast with the official word being that all bets are off with the new Spiderman 2 trailer out.
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You're right, rotating the head forward was stickier than any of the previous HMR VF-1s that I remember, but I'm not sure it's consistent. I think one of my pair moved pretty easily, but the other did take a decent push to fold it under the nose.
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Ok, just as a precaution, if anything is snapping when you push the hip bar past the head, it should be the intakes clicking into place. If you feel like you're going to break something, odds are you will. You have to push the hip bar past the head before snapping the chest plate down. That'll let you angle the nose upwards, and slip the hip bar under the back of the head. Then, you can wiggle the fuselage and intakes together without having to force the hip bar past anything.
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I think where the line gets blurry with the Lepin sets is that you can't just say "I'm buying this to get a set LEGO won't sell anymore, so they're not losing any money" when the next guy goes "I'm buying this to get parts cheaper than LEGO sells them." You may treat a set as a whole, and only want certain parts, but LEGO is absolutely losing money on a part-by-part basis, because for every unique element that LEGO hasn't manufactured in 30 years, there are probably several dozen elements that LEGO still actively produces. Far as reissues go, yeah, I'd love to see more old sets re-released, but I think LEGO is slightly cautious of doing that. After the re-release of the Taj Mahal set a couple years back, I was thrilled to be able to get one, but I got the impression that there was some backlash from collectors as they watched the value of their sets fall back to retail price. The market for treating LEGO as an actual investment has grown a ton, and while I personally think it's rather ridiculous, it is what it is, and people will treat old sets like stock traders. It would probably be better if it had never happened, but here we are. I think my biggest gripe about the more recent sets is actually a lot of the elements they seem to have discontinued. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's the direct reason the IDEAS Shuttle set failed. I haven't seen the old notched-style space wings in years now, as they've been supplanted by the ever widening selection of angled tiles (which I still want more angles of, honestly). The big missing piece is that we no longer have a way to make a seamless 45 degree wing, because all of the modern 45 degree plates that I know of have squared off corners (please correct me if I'm not aware of newer elements that fix this). Some of the smaller tiles and longer shallower angles have sharp corners that let you blend the edges and angles, but putting two 45 plates together will always leave a gap. It's driven me insane on a few projects, honestly.
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Given how pseudo-military Xaos was in the first place, I think all bets are off as to where they took their guidance from. One thing I am curious about is whether any of those "UN MARINES" or "UN NAVY" (or whatever other designations someone came up with) markings on VF-1s in assorted publications have any official source backing up their existence, or if they're just people being nostalgic for real-world markings, and projecting real life military delineations onto the Macross universe that don't actually canonically exist. Just from a practicality standpoint, depending on which version of SWI you reference, there may not have been enough people left of any particular branch of the military to remain functionally independent. Over time, the separations would make sense again, but if you were stranded in space with a mixed crew combined from Air Force, Navy, and , Army, and Marine Corps, and not enough chain of command for any of them to function without incorporating the others, I'd think they might just pick one system to stick with, or incorporate aspects of all of the into a single new system, with ranks and roles being divided up to best represent the remaining command infrastructure. Add in the Zentraedi influence, and you'll probably wind up adapting to some similar structure that completely re-aligns the designated areas of influence of the existing services, into something less splintered. As air and space merge into a single continuous battlespace, the need for actual ships would probably dwindle to near nothing. Why would you need boats on the water when they can just fly around, and go into orbit? The difference between land and water blurs, and you're left with "planetary" operations. I'd think the idea of a separate Air Force and Navy would disappear, and just be replaced by one command structure, while the Army would take over planet-based operations. I honestly don't know what would happen with the Marines, unless they were absorbed into the Army, but then you run into the idea of their being separate space-focused and land-focused troops. You could probably make the argument that the Army was everything related to planetary defense, while Marines were focused on offensive planetary operations. The existing military branches have pretty specific divisions of influence right now, but a lot of them are dependent on historical areas of specialization that don't really need to exist past a certain technological level, and get very blurry once you start dealing in interstellar terms. -
Finally got around to reading the Russo "explanation"... yeah, that explained nothing. Spoiler-free version is that their "rule" for the movie universe completely undermines the idea that anything "had" to happen the way it did. They just arbitrarily decided to not follow their own rules to fit the plot as needed.
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- don cheadle
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Finally just saw this last night, and yeah... I loved it, but my nerd side is screaming about the gaps.
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All snark about money and funding and such aside, I think one of the fan videos posted recently gives a good example of how ludicrously broad the scope of this game really is. (Early/ugly character models notwithstanding )
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Yeeeeeeeeeesh... $60 for decals, and a $70 weapons pack? That's not nickel and diming, that's highway robbery.
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- max factory
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The problem is that the higher cost is way out of proportion to other Macross merchandise. Bandai gives everything at this level of product the PF marking treatment as a baseline. The standard SV-51 is already twice as much as the DX VF-1. Arcadia has basically resigned itself to selling higher cost items that Bandai just doesn't seem interested in making, and is reaching "garage kit" status for price points. I feel like they're kind of stuck charging these prices in order to stay profitable, because they really can't compete with Bandai's production infrastructure.
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Arcadia's development and production cycle is much slower than Yamato's was, for reasons we can only really guess at. They're much more cautious about overproduction than Yamato, so they're selling much more limited runs, and raising their prices accordingly, I think. They have to walk a fine line on the supply/demand chart, because many of their releases are the more niche designs. The SV-51s were all shelf-warmers the first time around, so the price of these reflects the lower production numbers, and sales expectations. I don't feel like the bootlegs are doing that much damage, because they're still more expensive than the original Yamato releases, and they're not the major competitor anymore. I think the bottom line here is that they know they can't compete with Bandai on really any level. Arcadia had to reduce the prices on their PF VF-1s, because they were completely out of scale with the Bandai DX. You can factor the fast packs and missiles in there too to a point, but at the end of the day, the early PF releases were almost twice what the Bandai DX listed for. Unless Bandai gouges to high heaven, odds are, the 1/48 standard DX VF-1, combined with TWE missiles and fast packs, would still have been cheaper than a 1/60 Arcadia PF VF-1 release. Arcadia just cannot compete with Bandai's ability to produce lots of items at a very rapid pace. I don't think Arcadia has nearly the same size product lineup as Yamato did either, which hurts their ability to produce products. Smaller company, less products, less employees, and much longer development cycles.
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Ok, but seriously, where's my freakin IDEAS Shuttle, huh? Not to detract from the sets themselves, they look pretty fun. Though, with the new larger cone elements they made for the Harry Potter castle spires, I'd think they could come up with something better than the classic inverted curve stack of nose bits on that rocket. The Lepin news is just kind of wacky though. I'm pretty shocked to see China lifting any portion of a finger against a knockoff manufacturer.
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The only thing all of the DLC nonsense in the past years has taught me is to wait until the "complete" collection of any game comes out years later, and bypass the pile of extra payments you have to make to get the stuff early. Fortunately, I can wait until sometime during the PS5 era to get this one, since they've mentioned they're keeping PS4 games playable on it. I'm probably going to bypass the PS4 entirely due to this.
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The chest plate on the VF-1D is unique to that design, so it won't be interchangeable with any of the other VF-1s, sadly.
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Honestly, if you can see the die-cast, they're doing a terrible job. It should be hidden internally, so you don't wind up with paint scraping off everywhere. I'm not really sold on the elbow joint, and how that's suppose to be better though.. probably one of the uglier joints I've seen on a mech. But eh.. no harm in putting an order in at HLJ. Not sure if I'll keep it, but we'll find out.
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- macross zero ivanov
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Just picked a pair of VF-1Ds up from the post office, messed with one a bit. That head transformation into fighter was a bit hairy, I had to snap the hip bar under the head before I even connected the chest and backplates. Looks good otherwise though, and I'm glad to see they actually included the normal fighter mode stand adapter this time. Started work on some hardpoints to adapt.. not sure if I'll go ahead with just gluing these onto the underside of the wings, or painting them first. I'm curious if glue would even hold them well enough.
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I feel like this needs labels, because I had to look through the rest of the thread to confirm which was which. It looks.. like it should? It's exactly what I'd expect, and it looks good, but at the same time... it's like the difference between a 2018 car and the 2019 model, feature-wise maybe? I can't say I'm underwhelmed exactly, but not excited either.. to quote a friend recently, "I'm just perfectly whelmed." That being said, I'll probably have room in my budget for one, and I'll probably get Nora's when it happens. That way I can pair this one with my Arcadia VF-0S, and the Nora with my VF-0D, and leave my old Yammies paired up with each other. What I really want is a nice 1/60 F-14B++ for Nora to shoot down.
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STAR WARS Merchandise Episode - 2
Chronocidal replied to Black Valkyrie's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
If that's actually their gameplan, I hope it doesn't backfire spectacularly from how insanely tiny the "affordable" kits are. How many people who actually would shell out spectacular amounts of money for a centerpiece display kit are completely passing on these because they're too small to even see amongst their other display pieces? It's a freaking super star destroyer. There's nothing remotely impressive or imposing about a 7.5 inch arrowhead. It'll be dwarfed by even the A-wing kits I've built, because of how long and skinny it is. I would want something that substantial in the Star Wars universe to have some presence.. A 1/144 Falcon is still a nice size in-hand. The fighters in that scale are reasonable for displaying alongside it, but they're quickly driving these down from the category of "display model" and we're landing on "knick-knack." Great if you want a ton of little bitty things to decorate your office workspace with, but absolutely useless if you're after something to actually display. I know empty space is at something of a premium in Japan, but things like that 4-inch Tantive IV and this kit feel like an insult to the subject matter. -
Here's a wild idea.. why can't anyone finish a game before it's released anymore? Turn everything into a subscription model for non-stop cashflow.. yeesh.
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A good chunk of this is probably because the vast majority of kids watching Robotech never had any clue that DYRL even existed. I should probably be getting a pair of these by the end of this week, so I'm debating different potential methods to get some hardpoints on the wings. I've considered making a wing to get 3D printed copies of, but I'm also curious if I could just glue some drilled-out sprue nubs under the wings. I might even have some nearly-matching tan sprue saved somewhere in my stash.
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The VT-1 is a dedicated trainer, like a T-38. The VF-1D is more akin to a two-seat combat-ready version, like an F-5F. And either way, just because an aircraft is a dedicated trainer variant, it should still be completely weapons capable. How else are pilots going to learn weapons employment? Either way, it's a stupid way for Bandai to cheapen out. I love how they consistently fall back on "screen accuracy" as a way to excuse skimping on what other manufacturers would call a standard feature. Looks like I'm going to have to make some spare wings.