Chronocidal

Yeah, VF-1Js are not specifically the problem. This is just the classic Bandai "No one likes anything but the main character" strategy on blast. And this isn't even a Hikaru problem, this is specifically re-releasing the single most common hero design repeatedly.

Had to dig a bit for this topic, just noticed this is getting a re-release next summer. https://anime-export.com/index.php?product=86121

Double post, realized there was a dedicated thread for the 1/48 Swordfish.

Man.. Bandai is just allergic to making their products actually available to the people who want to throw money at them.

It is kind of a dumb issue to have, but it really comes down to how the part arrangement on the different sprues works out. So for instance, the YF-21 comes with the jagged yellow markings over the intakes molded in yellow. That's a separate piece. That's great to not have to paint that part. But then you get to the M&M VF-22s, and suddenly that part needs to be the same color as the main body. Whoops. You're left with two options here. Either you're going to include alternate sprues of the correct color for that part with each version, or you're going to take the cheap way out and tell the customer to paint it, or include a sticker to cover it up. Bandai has done both in various kits, and I have to assume it just comes down to what makes the most financial sense. The HG Fire Valkyrie kit includes several sprues lifted straight from the YF-19 release for some of the joints, and even includes parts that won't be used until they make a normal VF-19F/S. You get a ton of spare parts, but that's something that works into the price. The Mirage Sv-262 was hilarious for this, because the dual white and magenta scheme basically meant you had another half a kit's worth of unused parts when you were done. In the VF-22's case, I'm just guessing it didn't make any financial sense for them to include an entire sprue in gray, rather than letting the modeler paint or decal over a single black part that needed to be gray. Edit: Just opened my kit to look, and I'm assuming this is about the upper arms. Yeah, they're the color of the main body, because the upper arms on the YF-21 are blue, and each of those two parts are spread across two of the larger sprues containing a large amount of the main body of the valk. Including a spare copy of those sprues molded in gray would be been incredibly excessive, and very likely increased the cost of the kit substantially. Otherwise they would have had to make a dedicated sprue mold of just that part for this release. This one was already a massive price hike over the YF-21, so the extra cost to include those parts in their proper color just wouldn't have made any sense. Although... I'm really curious why they included the barrier punch effect in gray. That's just really strange. This won't be a problem on the M&M versions, since they have their upper arms molded in their main body color like the YF-21. However, like I said above, they don't have the upper intake zig-zags, so we're getting stickers for them the same way.

Yeah, lumping a ton of items that people may or may not want all together is a bizarre way to arrange it. And aside from that, until they can actually meet dates they set, that list really means nothing.

I find it (and most of the 31 series) much easier to handle if you remove the canards. It's not the best option, but it does give you a nice place to pick up the valk by.

Not even kidding, just pick up one of the Yamato VF-19s. The trailing edges of he wings are sharp enough to use as a general utility knife.

Yeah, Hasegawa has only produced one type of YF/VF-19 airframe. Modelers have customized both the 1/72 and 1/48 molds in a crazy number of ways to make all of the custom versions you see, like the Nothung or other derivatives, including a lot of customs to make the other VF-19 versions. I'd really like to see official kit versions of some of those other types though, especially the VF-19EF Caliburn SMS mod.

Yeah, I'm not terribly hopeful, but I'm just thinking of this in terms of what the path of minimal effort on Bandai's part will be, in terms of what changes they will need to make to the packaging going forward. Just in terms of prior releases, the Angelbirds release gave us a box big enough to contain the bonus flight stand, and the normal stand tray was updated to contain the extra tails. Assuming they use that box, and don't repackage the flight stand with missiles, the most likely option for where they will pack them is to re-design the normal stand tray to contain them in place of the extra Angelbirds tails. That would give them a ready-made standard display stand tray capable of adding the TV missiles to any future release as a pack-in. Will they actually do it? Who knows. What occurs to me though is that the TV missiles are the least labor intensive of the weaponry (no assembly and minimal paint/tampo), and adding them to future TV releases in a redesigned tray using an existing box is far cheaper than another production run of the full missile set.

Yeah, this was at the original release, not the more recent re-issue. That was basically the only attempt I ever made to get Bandai to replace a missing or broken part, so I don't know if things ever changed, or if it was possibly just the vendor I used that didn't try very hard.

I need to get on this as well, and develop a good pylon mod to get them to attach directly to the unmodified wing. I'm almost kind of tempted to just mod the pylons themselves to attach to the Bandai weapons, but the Hasegawa ones are much more detailed. I forget how many packs I actually picked up, but fortunately the number of missiles of different types works out pretty well for arming up a good number of valks at once, since the opening loadout from DYRL was two boxes and two dual reaction missile mounts, but Hikaru used four boxes in the finale. I think you can equip the entire DYRL opening group and Hikaru's 1S with four missile sets, which leaves you enough TV missiles for pretty much all of the appropriate TV versions as well: Roy, Hikaru's 1J, Max's 1A, and the theoretical TV Kakizaki, if it ever happens.

Being totally honest, I'm halfway tempted to sell one of my first release copies, and just trade it out for this one, since it will have the later mold improvements like the fixed nose cone.

I'd say nuts to the redo, just go big, and give us more 1/48 valks. I'll just have to start selling off the older ones to afford them, but even that's a benefit, since it would mean the collection would shrink overall, since I'd be selling multiples to buy singles of the new generation.

So.. I admit, I was actually joking about it being cheaper than buying a missile set for a VF-1 you already own.. But wow. Granted, that's not accounting for the Tamashii Tax, but still. Between the exchange rate and markup on the missiles, yeah, it's cheaper to do this than get a missile set, if all you want is the TV missiles. Obviously, you don't get the DYRL boxes and RMS warheads. But still. Pretty funny. All I'm really hoping is that this beats some sense into the blockheads responsible for the missile situation, and they make use of the adjusted packaging to give us TV missiles with all of the TV valks from here on out.

With the way Bandai manages their releases, this might come out cheaper than buying a set of missiles separately.

Yeah, no. As much as I want a Gnerl, I'm fairly certain I could design and print my own before they would even start shipping them out.

Why do I assume a fantasy space jet fighter has to be rooted in real world aircraft engineering? Because a significant chunk of the media involving the VF-1 shows it flying in the atmosphere, operating as a standard aircraft, completely independently of any of the advanced technology it depends on for transforming. That's baked into the definition of what the VF-1 is, as defined in the universe it exists in. The prototype couldn't even transform, so it had to be capable of flying as a normal aircraft. Does that mean it has to? No. But it does. Could I cover it in thrusters, remove the wings, and make it fly on pure fantasy rocket power? Sure. But it doesn't do that in any of the animation. Maybe I'm narrow minded, but when I think of re-imagining a design, I don't believe that also involves re-imagining the universe it exists in, or the rules it operates by. It starts to get into a ship of Theseus situation. How different can I make something before it can no longer be considered a re-interpretation of the thing it's derived from? Once you start redefining the rules it operates under, you're probably better off just making an original design, or even writing your own universe with its own lore to operate within. And honestly, I'm not even saying this goes that far. With enough thrust, I'm sure even this thing could fly (hey, it worked for the F-4 ), I get the aesthetic idea. I don't even mind the look of the battroid. But what I'm more concerned with are aspects that are completely separate from design aesthetics, and more focused on the actual engineering of the toy. The mechanical execution of this toy just looks sloppy as hell. The design just looks like they wanted to make a re-interpreted robot design, and the transformation is a contractual obligation. How did they manage to come up with tail hinges that look clunkier than just about every other VF-1? Why are there so many weird joints and panels that look like the toy is actively trying to fall apart at the seams? It really begs the question of why they would make it transform at all. The battroid looks like an interesting redesign, especially with the armor added. But I think they would have been better off selling it as a non-transforming figure, because the other two modes feel like they actually detract from the presentation. Maybe it's just a sloppy prototype issue, combined with display preppers who don't know how to clean it up?

In short? Freaking awesome. There was a reason I really wanted Yamato to make some more versions of their VF-19 molds after they finished the canon M7 paints, but alas, it was not to be. I would love to see Hasegawa just make any style of the production variant, maybe with optional wings and canards.

Late reply, but for the record, the F-15's FAST packs don't make it any faster either. It's an acronym: Fuel And Sensor Tactical Packs. In the case of valkyries, that S might stand for "stores" (meaning weapons) or "systems" since they obviously carried both of those as well. Anyhow, I'm still just frustrated that Hasegawa seems completely uninterested in making a 1/48 YF-21 to go with all of the YF-19 variants they have. Beyond that, I want to see them actually make VF-19s (aside from Isamu's). I'd seriously love some actual production versions. The Master File was full of them, and it's a beautiful plane, no matter what arrangement of wings and canards it uses.

I can understand people liking the aesthetics (of the battroid, anyway), but I think this is one of those cases where it is an incredibly bold decision to think that it will appeal to a large enough audience to sell well. Aesthetics entirely aside, this is a product designed for a niche within a niche within a niche, and should fall under that same reasoning for why obscure variants and paint schemes are generally never brought to mass market: there simply is not enough interest to make the production pay for itself. This one.. I just don't understand it. My brain is just kind of screaming at me that it doesn't make any sense. It feels like they're trying to design a VF-1 for... people who don't like the aircraft mode of the VF-1? It's just confusing. Their presentation isn't helping matters either, because holy cow that display is a disaster. The battroid mode at least stands up, but the gerwalk looks like a looks collection of bot parts slapped together, and the fighter is falling apart.

Definitely take advantage of that warranty card, they should have no trouble getting you either a replacement landing gear, or replacement leg to fix that issue. It took a few weeks to get to me, but I did receive the replacement wing they sent me to fix the scraped up paint issue I had. The shoulder slider issue really is baffling, and your experience makes me wonder if people are just accepting of that? I'm not sure. Maybe we just both lost out on the QC lottery. To be clear though, the fix for it isn't actually what I would call difficult, because the entire thing can be easily disassembled with screws. The whole backplate comes apart easily, and will let you completely remove the arms from those sliding rails, making them much easier to work on. The best option is that specifically sized drill bit I mentioned using, but I'm sure the same effect could be achieved with a narrow enough file to widen the hole in the shoulder slider. At the end of the day? I think this is a solid battroid display model more than anything else. I have my DX and Yamato versions for all the fighter mode display I could ask for, but this one's leg joints give it a much wider range of poses possible, so I have no trouble displaying it that way, and will probably keep my Roy pre-order to display the pair together.

What I've always wanted to see someone try was actually make the lower legs expand and collapse. As far as I recall, the Yamato design did follow the original art for how the legs were supposed to be arranged in the belly, and while they're obviously way too skinny, I never thought they looked bad from the side. I don't know if you would have the required space to get the full sized legs Bandai used, but say you could hinge the side panels of the calves below the knee, and let them expand, while filling the front and back in with panels that recessed when collapsed, you might get something that looked at least a little better than the "fully collapsed" version we have now.

The Sharon poster is a little awkward, so it'd need some matting to frame it nicely. Overall dimensions are 8" and 1/2" by 11" and 11/16"... it's not much better in metric, at 210 mm by 297 mm. The other prints are all very close to 12" and 3/8" on each side, so slightly bigger than 12"x12."

The Bandai one is much easier to come by, provided you don't care about having the extra weapons and fast packs. I'll be curious to see when Bandai gets around to making a separate weapons pack so people with the YF-21 can get the fold booster. You're right about the ankles and wings on the Arcadia though, and I wish they would make an update to fix them. The wings I've fixed myself, but the ankles have always been pretty bad. The neck cover is a tricky one though, since you would have to have it collapse somewhere not already taken up by the nosecone in battroid mode. Bandai's method of attaching it to the arm shield mostly works, but you're still left having to use a separate neck cover for gerwalk... which for as much as people seem to completely ignore the YF-19's gerwalk mode, wasn't a terrible idea.