Chronocidal

You might be best off actually just attempting to cut some sheet plastic (or even metal) into a shape to replace the entire mechanism. I don't know how sturdy it would be, but you might be able to find some strong enough plastic to hold it in place.

So far no one has actually attempted to make the YF/VF-19's gear the way Kawamori designed them. The Master File actually looks like it just copied an F-18's landing gear, which really does not seem like the right shape. The Yamato VF-19s and Arcadia YF-19 are very close to the original shape shown in that Blazer diagram, but they dont include the sideways rotation mechanism that would make the tires lay flat in the bay like an actual aircraft would have them. Most (if not all) valks with the gear in the legs really should fold and rotate, but it might be a pretty fragile mechanism in 1/60th scale. So far the only valks to really attempt that type of rotation were the Yamato VF-11 and the YF-21/VF-22.

Concerning the curvature of the nose, and how it differs... the only real difference is that Bandai essentially reversed the curvature of the flap that folds into the underside of the chest for battroid. It just bulges downward slightly. It's not that stark, and there is a fair amount of lineart that agrees with it, but I personally think it's just ugly and unfitting to shape the nose that way. There is no structural or transformation related reason for it, and I think it breaks up the smooth curvature of the nose, making it look un-aerodynamic. It's really no biggie, it's just one of those typical headscratcher design decisions Bandai seems to love. I mean, if you've got inconsistent lineart to work with, why would you choose the ugliest example to follow?

I'm personally just not a fan of Bandai's "Let's see how many tiny parts we fit into the space of this single solid piece" design strategy, mostly because of what a disaster it caused with the VF-171s. They seem to have at least learned a little by now, and glad to see and hear how sturdy it is in practice.

You know, dunno if this was pointed out, but if they don't make the armor, I'm going to be really pissed at those useless holes they left in the intakes.

Actually yeah... I casually rubbed a finger across some of the black on the wingroots, and it just flaked off... will probably have to touch up the paint on it soon.

I should say one thing I realized about those gaps... it's not all gap. The dark paint on the front edge of the chest actually makes the gap look bigger than it is.

Still up at HLJ it seems, just grabbed one on impulse.. I was gonna pass on this one, but apparently I gotta catch em all.

It might not be too hard to drill out the tail and add a pin to hold it in, so I'd think that tail should definitely be fixable. Even if you just build up a lump of superglue to hold it in, it might work, though you might need to repair the notch for the tab if it's been distorted.

Nothing you can really do about the shield gaps, the legs are pretty well in place to where you can't really squeeze them together. Probably would need a bigger shield to fill it in better.

It's a mix of the high speed mode, the hip mechanism, and a few other odds and ends about the transformation like the doors around the head, and the way the tails fold. The overall transformation is quite different, and much less concerned with being accurate to the old YF-19 lineart it would seem, since it is supposed to be a different design by this point.

For myself, and probably a few other people here, a large factor is that Yamato/Arcadia put forth an effort to cater to the aircraft side of Macross, while Bandai seemed to have no comprehension of the material, or what kind of details people expect in a high end aircraft collectible. When people pay this much for them, many people expect the kind of detail seen on dedicated aircraft collectible models, and for a long time, Yamato catered to that in ways that Bandai stumbled over repeatedly (clearest example, any Bandai attempt at landing gear... the gag-worthy ones on the v.1 VF-25 made them look completely incompetent at designing a valk toy). Bandai is getting better, but they still are coming from a long history of extremely mecha-focused merchandise, which never have a direct analogue in real life to imitate. When you start to build something that might theoretically exist in this world, people expect you to do research, and for a long time, they didn't. These latest releases are really hitting the mark though. There's also the fact that they love overcomplication, using far too many parts to do what a single piece can do, using die-cast in the most unnecessary places, and just being generally bad at planning color and part breakdowns (they seem to absolutely love molding things entirely in the wrong color, and then painting over the entire part.. not a great idea on something that transforms). I'm not going to say what they make doesn't look cool, because it absolutely does. I just haven't seen them produce something with the same detail, durability, and simplicity of the v.2 VF-1. They're getting much better though. In a more general company sense though, I heavily preferred Yamato, because they actually made some effort to communicate with the fans here, and actually helped us get parts to repair things when they broke. Bandai has shown time and again that they don't give a flying crap about the overseas market. Arcadia has been more quiet since they came onto the scene, but they've still been a lot more open to fan comments about their work than Bandai's secret bunkers.

I don't think Bandai has ever even considered replacing individual parts, they pretty much seem to be an all or nothing replacement deal. They don't replace parts, they just request the entire thing back. Given the manufacturing practices I once discussed with a former Toyota employee, it might not be common for Japanese companies to stock spare parts for anything at all.

It's wide because the lower half of the wing glove has a tab holding it down away from the wing. The Arcadia one doesn't have a tab, but the lower half is naturally curved upwards around the wing, and flexes away when you move the wings. I don't know if the gap is necessary, but the Arcadia's wing can actually hang up on the lower glove, because the hardpoints stick out slightly. What really strikes me as different about the Bandai one is that the legs are a completely different shape. They taper a ton towards the top, and it actually looks like the area around the foot is the wrong shape, but it still works in general.

Even straight out of the box actually, my right wing root did not want to stay in all the way. It took a little massaging to figure out how to get everything aligned, and gave me flashbacks to the transforming VF-25 kits. What actually helped mine was lifting the wing roots a little. Pressing them down into the hips to get the joints flush seems to cause the hips to twist a little, so lifting the wingroot a little helped fix that. The wing root joints are still all the way down, but the wings seem to angle up a tiny bit. There actually is an image in the instructions that looks like it mentions this, but I can't read what is being called out.

The head laser is supposed to have an angled tip, so don't worry about that. As far as the wing boosters are concerned, yes, I think they goofed up the molding process on the right one. Both the larger rectangular tab, and the little nub on top looked like they were melted. I had to use a razor blade to trim the lower tab a little, and give it sharp edges to actually get it to hold onto the slot on the wing root. It still isn't what I would call a solid connection, but it stays decently enough.

So, after fiddling with this thing a bit, I'm realizing what it reminds me of: the Bandai 1/72 VF-25 kits. It's the same sort of process of pushing, squeezing, and tweaking all the panels from various directions to get them to line up correctly. Once in the proper position, it's a beauty. It's just not really fun to transform. What I do think though, is that Bandai engineers have a completely out of control fetish for over-complication, and unnecessary complexity. The thing that really sticks out for that.. the neck-cover/shield is just completely ridiculous. I'm tempted to rip the neck cover section off of the shield entirely, and use the regular neck cover they included for gerwalk mode. That being said, I think the fighter mode of this one is probably my favorite out of every VF-19 variant released. It feels really close to the Hasegawa kit to me honestly, mostly because of the slimmer leg design, and the shape of the intakes. The wing glove hinge especially is a huge improvement over the way Arcadia's does it.. it's entirely flush in fighter, and rotates out pretty easily. Only nit-picks I think that really detract from it are the strange nose gear design (it's clever yes, but the tiny gear doors look weird to me), and the weirdly out-of-place bulge in the panel under the nose.. it looks like the plane is trying to swallow something too big, and just breaks up the clean lines. I still like the Arcadia for its balanced design, but I think that'll remain the one I transform regularly, while the Bandai will stay in fighter mode. The Arcadia one kind of looks like an anime aircraft, while this one looks closer to an actual model kit. The tampo isn't so overkill looking in person fortunately. As a side note, no, the Arcadia weapons don't fit on this one, but I'm thinking if someone makes some new pylons to adapt the Arcadia weapons, we'll have no trouble mounting them. I wonder if Shapeways will print in light tan..

I'm not sure if it was the same booster on mine, but they seem to have molding problems with the tabs. I had to sharpen the edges of the underside tab with a razor blade before it would latch, and the little upper nubs on both my boosters look malformed, like someone sat on them. Also, to get the pieces for the back of the legs to fit in fighter mode, you have to push the flaps under the shoulders down, and slot them in under the leading edge of the gray piece. It's a stupid thing really, I had to use the tip of a ballpoint pin to reach in there to do do it. I saw the "NO LIFT" marks too, that made me laugh. Oh, one thing I realized about their entire shield mechanism... It's actually just wrong. The screencaps of the movie show the shield sitting behind the head with the exact same gap as the old YF-19, and nothing like the cowling they added to streamline the head. It doesn't look bad, but the sliding neck cover just feels completely unnecessary when you need a separate neck cover for gerwalk.

So, I definitely had screwed up tabs to hold on the boosters too. For lack of a better term, the blocks on the underside looked like they had been smooshed down, and the edges were sloped too much to hold the edges on the wing root. I had to carve them a little to restore the sharp edge that would hold the boosters on. Still experimenting with the rest of the add-ons, but it's looking pretty nice so far.

I was looking at how to raise the canards higher as well, it looks like you'd just need to remove a little material from inside the pivot housing to allow them to rotate more. I tried pulling off the canard mounts to make the mod easier, but they didn't want to come out of the fuselage. I haven't looked too closely at them yet, but let me know if you manage to get them off. I did try one quick experiment that would have made the shield and neck cover work essentially like the Arcadia. I just popped the neck cover out of the sliding bracket on the shield. Unfortunately, in order to fully work, I would have to remove the sliding bracket as well, since it wont let the shield attach in fighter mode unless it's extended.

Honestly, you might not even need to. The laser has two engraved lines circling it, so I'm guessing it probably broke at one of those? If you round the edge of the new piece you attach, you'll just keep the detail there, and it'll hide the seam nicely. Might not even need to sand it, it'll just be a clean butt-joint.

Managed to pick mine up at lunch today, since it arrived at the local post office after the trucks went out, and wouldn't have been delivered until tomorrow, but they had already processed it. Been piddling around with it a bit, I had to mostly transform the thing to gerwalk to actually get all the parts lined up, because whoever packed it had basically left everything as gappy and disheveled as possible. Looks good in fighter so far, though getting everything aligned is a real trick. And as creative as the neck cover/shield connection is, I wish they had just left them apart, because that entire setup is just a pain to deal with.

At this point, I'd keep it and take the discount, since that's going to be much easier than getting another one, and a whole heckuva lot cheaper. Considering how much stress the head laser takes on a regular basis (that is, pretty much none at all), I dont know if I'd even bother with something as fancy as a printed replacement. You could just extend the tip to the right size with plastic scraps, sand it and paint it, and it might look as good as new. You could probably even just replace the entire laser with one made from styrene scrap, provided you can get the head apart to install it, but given Bandai's history with gluing everything, I wouldn't count on it at all.

That's not to say they didn't incorporate ideas from the Yamato VF-19s, which I think were out long before the Isamu cameo came up. I'd chalk up the rest of the similarities to there just being only so many ways you can actually make a YF/VF-19 work. And yeah, I might have to mod the canards to angle up further. I was hoping the hinges would let them angle up correctly, but it seems that isn't the case. The wingroots not pegging into the leg armor though.. that's just fricken stupid lazy on Bandai's part.

I tend to get picky about markings, because I know what they're there for, and what they mean.. it's the same reason I couldn't stand the BoP/Doublenuts releases of the Yamato YF-19.. they went and did color swaps of things that are colored a specific way for a reason. The biggest offender was painting the anti-glare panel ahead of the canopy bright orange. Aside from that though, because they did a straight up "let's just put other colors in the paint machine and run it the same way" process, a bunch of thruster vents wound up orange as well. The things that gripe me are when you get "NO STEP" printed on the underside of wings (which to be fair, almost makes sense in a zero-g environment, but in zero-g, you wouldn't be "stepping" on anything), or random warning symbols for exhaust getting placed near landing gear doors, and things of that nature. I don't know if they did that this time, but I know I saw a completely randomly placed "DO NOT TOUCH" marking right under the wingroot, on.. well, really nothing. It was the flat surface of the intake housing. I know I think too much about it, but it just gives me the impression that Bandai is trying its hardest to overwhelm people with details, while never actually caring if they're accurate in any way. And yes, the markings look far too big for the details they're applied to, or at least in too bold a font.