Chronocidal

I forget if the review I got that capture from actually showed the arms moving enough to tell of they move that way. I'm assuming those were company stock photos used during pre-order.

I'd have to dig one out check, but I thought those were just the seams from where the shoulders go together. The tops are opening caps, so those portions have to be sandwiched around the shoulder front to back (or side to side in this case).

Yeah, that is a very good comparison. And just to be perfectly clear, the HG kit still uses those same arms in fighter mode.

They're really .. "generous" about what they consider a "piece." They're probably counting every figure included in the set. I've already got a pair of Y-Wings, so probably would just make more sense to track down the Ghost and the scout ship separately at this point. That being said, these are getting to be insanely overpriced. I have no idea what determines their "retail" price, but they are absolutely only something to seek out at a discount.

Boy I would absolutely love to see how much bigger you could get the legs of the Yamato if they used the Bandai style transformation. Might still need to hollow out the underside of the engine fairings on the backplate to fit them in, but that was always one of my bigger curiosities about the Yamato design. There's a fair amount of room there, if you don't cover it up.

Doesn't that nose piece have to slide forward to provide an opening for the hip bar to fit into the nose? That's how the Bandai DX has it. The sloppy mounting is a separate issue, of course.

Seeing this.. I might go and just cancel the order I put in at BBTS. Looking like they just managed to transport all of the detrimental features of the DX to the Yamato V2 size, while adding a healthy dose of un-thinking in the process. Also.. I'm resisting the urge to scream here. Seriously.. is it THAT hard to type "aircraft markings" into google, and do even a cursory search to understand what markings might possibly make sense in what locations? I can maybe give the "beware of blast" on the nose fairings a pass, since I'm not sure it was ever defined what those were.. but warning people about propellant being stored in the tails has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever seen printed on a valk. Far as the elbow goes though, everyone's curious whether the block inside the arm can rotate like discussed in some earlier pictures. Early prototypes show it moving (like every other VF-1 has done), but it looks like that section is frozen in place in more recent pics. It would theoretically give the arm a third elbow joint.

I think the thing that strikes me the most about the arms is that Bandai made them small enough to hide entirely inside the panels, while Yamato's just used the arms themselves as the side panels. The side-by-side is really telling, the Bandai's arms are absolutely scrawny by comparison, with tiny hands to match. The Yamato's hands may have been a little too beefy, but these are definitely too small. The backpack does throw off the side profile, but I don't really notice it from the front. The upper torso just looks undersized.

Ah, interesting, that one comes with the scout ship included. Never really cared for the design myself, but I might pick that set up if I see it on sale.

I wonder if that entire backplate shelf is so complex that it couldn't be replaced with an accordion-folding panel. That seems like it would be a pretty simple way to collapse the giant gap.

I've never wanted to risk screwing up the one I have, so maybe I'll just have to track down a second one of these days. Maybe we'll get lucky and Arcadia will re-release it once the noise from the Bandai one blows over. I'm curious how well it will fare on the markets.

Yeah, this. It's all the more painful because bigger arms would have drastically reduced the badonkish look as well, by moving the tails further back. There is a ton of space behind the arms that could have been used by more arm.

I'd even take more of the V1. Just give me a PF version to match my YF-19.

I'm not even necessarily thinking of just the broken antenna. I'd like to see how many Japanese fans are as disappointed by the compromises in this design as many of us are here.

Is there some place to go and just yell incoherently about how terrible this is where Bandai will pay attention to it? Or do we just have to hope the Japanese customers will do that for us?

It kind of depends. I avoid DHL because of issues getting things to me here (no local hub), but I tend to shuffle items in and out of the box to find the best deal, and generally EMS comes out the best for me. It's usually a shuffle between paying for weight vs volume, and knowing that HLJ has a few specific sizes of box to use.

Oh, I do, and I'm not going to use FedEx anyhow. I'm just laughing at how their "economy" shipping is more expensive than the priority option. This isn't even going to be the total, I just tested a couple of items.. the actual box is going to be much bigger I think.

Yeah, my shipping for this is going to be massive anyhow, since I'm packing it in with a whole pile of other things I've been waiting on. I was HOPING the HG YF-21 would make it (along with a couple of other kits that were on backorder), but I'm done waiting on that one. Maybe I'll get it once more things come in. This though? Really hurts my brain.

There we go, HLJ finally getting one of my pre-ordered YF-21s in the warehouse. Still waiting on the HG kit. But yeah, that exchange rate. $227. I think that's less than I paid for the Yamato.

Uh.. YEAH.. NO, Bandai. Stop lying.

Bandai has never had any trouble at all completely over-engineering everything they touch, to their detriment. If they're relying on removable pins to keep the stupid thing from falling apart, this is just an astounding next-level of design failure. I'm genuinely curious now. Does this DX actually have more removable parts than the parts-swapping HG kit? The kit detaches and reattaches a lot of things, but I think it mostly uses the same parts for all modes, apart from the nose section.

Funny, I think it's not actually looking terrible in fighter mode in those pics, so long as you angle the camera to hide that redonkulous back end. I don't think Bandai's photographers were doing it any favors with the focal lengths making the nose look shorter than it actually is. Still looks a bit short, but not as bad as it initially seemed. I still think the entire thing would be massively improved if the lower arms were beefed up and lengthened. Would pretty much improve every mode in fact, since the arms still look stupidly whimpy in battroid, and the tails look yanked up too far forward in fighter. Just lengthen the lower arms for instant improvement. It even looks like there's room for it, under those stupid side panels.

Interesting, Anime Export just pinged me that my YF-21 order with them is in. Probably going to wait to ship that one with the VT-1 and HMR Fire Valk in August though, since my other is at HLJ, and they've been pestering me to ship my warehouse orders for months (and yet they STILL cannot get the HG YF-21 in stock ).

The painfully funny thing to me is that the delimiter mode actually looks like the most aesthetically pleasing display option, because it sheds a good chunk of the ugly garbage. I just need to find a way to attach the legs to my Yamato, and I'll be all set.

Part of me suspects Bandai is unwilling to raise domestic prices at all to spread the costs of the international releases across production, so the international releases are probably covering that entire expense category.