Jump to content

Chronocidal

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    10758

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Chronocidal

  1. Chronocidal
    There's a scene of it sitting in a hangar, but it's from above, and you never actually see what's supporting it.
  2. Chronocidal
    Not really falling out of love, but it isn't really amazing enough to convince me to re-buy the other VF-0s. The improvements in the quality of the construction are nice, but not enough to replace the ones I have. I'm thrilled to finally have a VF-0D to match the other 1/60ths, and the quality of the construction is definitely on another level, but some of the features don't even seem to work as well as the originals. Edit: Maybe I was wrong about falling out of love... first transformation left me pretty disappointed in some of the changes from the first version. I'll save you my first impression ranting though. Edit 2: On a second try at transformation to battroid, things were a little smoother, but I guess I'm really just not impressed with the "improvements" over the first version. The higher precision seems like it directly works contrary to making things fun to transform. I know others have expressed similar feelings about the VF-19 series, and I can see why. My list of quibbles is all for pretty minor things, but the hip joints really are a problem. The left leg pretty much swings freely, and the only thing that will stop it from doing so while standing is to brace it against the backplate and wings. On the lighter side of things though, the new arm design really is a huge improvement. The double elbow joints are getting better all the time.
  3. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    It's also against a brilliantly glaring white background, so I don't know if that's a good way to judge the color.
  4. Chronocidal
    I'm still curious why they ditched the original VF-0 fighter adapter. It was a bit bulky, but no where near the monstrosity they included with the 0D.. and it was probably the most well-balanced mounting point I've ever seen on any Yamato/Arcadia valk. Pretty much every single other adapter has been mounted so far ahead of the balance point as to both be really unstable, and look pretty awkward.
  5. Chronocidal
    ... what.
  6. Chronocidal
    Finally got my pair from HLJ dropped off, and looks really nice overall, but have to admit I'm not all that impressed with some of the "upgrades" from the first version. I might skip the other re-releases after all. Main gripes for me: -Tail mechanism is pretty sloppy, fortunately that's only on the D-model. -I know people like flush landing gear doors, but these are a pain in the backside. They really need a gap to lift them like the VF-19 series has. -The feet really do not like to extend. -I think they've actually started making the pilots too small for the cockpits. On the plus side, it's nice to finally have one of these in my hands, so no regrets. I do like how everything locks together better without having to touch up the pegs with a coat of glue. I am a little sad they left the HUD out of the cockpit though. That was a nice detail in the originals (even if it did break off on one of mine).
  7. Chronocidal
    We haven't gotten a 1/48th Y-wing ever, I think. So, hopefully they'll actually DO that. but seriously, the scales of Star Wars craft are so wacky, it's really tough to get them all the same scale, and still be decently sized. I think the original MPC Snowspeeder kit was something like 1/24, and it felt perfect at that size, because the thing is so tiny. Same for the A-wing. A lot of ships in that universe aren't much bigger than cars.
  8. Chronocidal
    I really like the gold as well, it actually looks less gaudy than the yellow. I just dont remember the canopy ever looking yellow, though, so I don't know why they felt the need to color it.
  9. Chronocidal
    Without the electronic gimmicks, too, if you please.
  10. Chronocidal
    You know, if they hadn't tinted the canopy, I might have been sold on picking up one of these.. but I already have two of the Yamato releases, plus the sound booster. I am curious what sort of coating the metallic gold is, and how durable it would be with regards to scratching. I really killed the paint on one of my VF-19Fs trying to get the shoulders lifted, but fortunately that was just black trim, and easy to touch up.
  11. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    Problem with Macross in general is that the people who can buy these KNOW that the rest of the world is starved for decent Macross merchandise. The scalper market will latch onto that as a way to make a profit, and regardless of how high demand may or may not be for the actual product, they'll drive the demand through the roof trying to make a fast buck on Ebay.
  12. Chronocidal
    You know what? I just had an amusing realization. Your comment about the ink pen jarred my memory about how people used to rely on Bic pen mods to give their old 1/55ths thigh rotation joints. If I can get the knee joint apart well enough to work on it and get it working, that old mod might be a decent way to get the thigh pivot working again.
  13. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    Was that what they had to change to get the GPB to mount properly then? But yeah, that's disappointing to just get the same display again with a single update on the VF-1J.
  14. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    The problem with the nose isn't a lineart thing.. it's a cross-section issue. They did it with the 1/100, and they did the same thing (to an even worse extent actually, in my opinion) with the 1/72 transforming kit. Whether it's accurate or not is one issue, but ever since the Takatoku 1/55, my impression was that the VF-1 had a fairly flat underside to the forward fuselage, shaped a little like the Su-24 Fencer. The tip has always looked bent up and flat underneath, and the flat bottom blends well with the nose fairings, and makes the transition to the head nice and even. Everything since then has seemed to carry over that flat bottom. The Yamato/Arcadia molds always have, and Hasegawa picked up on that. Frankly, it makes sense from a landing gear perspective too, since the gear door arrangement resembles a naval F-4, which had a big flat square door in front. The flat doors helped simplify the mechanism on the early VF-1 toys on top of it. Bandai seems to love screwing with expectations, because they seem to be convinced that the nose should be a near circular cross section. A lot of the line-art for the VF-1 disagrees with that, and to top it off, I think the round nose section just looks ugly, and gives the plane a bad shape aesthetically. The MMM pics definitely do not look like the nose is circular. (From The Macross Mecha Manual, apologies if I cited that in a non-preferred way) Granted, there's a lot of art quality fluctuation, so the shape of the nose may or may not vary frame by frame. But I thought the shape of the nose was fairly well defined, before Bandai started trying to re-write the line art. Edit: Looking at other pics, the Hi-Metal is still fairly flat underneath, but that upper view of the nosecone just looks horribly misshapen, as if there's no actual curvature to it at all, and it's just a straight cone shape.
  15. Chronocidal
    Just curious, did they dramatically shrink the ghosts for Frontier? They're almost identical, save for a few fins and probes and surface details, but they seem much smaller than those dimensions.
  16. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    Does Bandai just have some kind of natural inability to shape a nosecone correctly?
  17. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    The under/overpricing between Bandai and Yamato back then really screwed the original hi-metal line. Whether it was Bandai overpricing or underproducing the hi-metals, Yamato overproducing the v.2 VF-1s, or some combination of both, when I went looking at buying a hi-metal, they were more expensive than just about every single 1/60th VF-1 on the market. With Arcadia's pricing scale getting higher, the hi-metals may have more of a chance this time, but the market damage may be done, and Bandai might have a hard time selling an incredibly limited selection of 1/100 VF-1s to people who are already sitting on a complete line of 1/60ths. That nostalgia itch has been scratched, and that window is closed for a lot of people, and might not open for a long while. I just hope Bandai will milk their molds to the same extent that Yamato did. I think offering a more complete line is probably one thing that would convince people with limited space to sell off their 1/60ths for a more compact collection. Having the enemy mechs and destroids is already a huge benefit, but I wonder if it's enough for Bandai to actually call the line a success.
  18. Chronocidal
    Well, the base mold is the same, with a few swapped pieces, and different colors. The thing there is that the YF-21 is iconic, nearly the star of it's own show (the entire Macross Plus movie intro was a big YF-21 montage). The VF-22s all showed up for probably less screentime across the entirety of Macross 7 than the YF-21 got in its OAV and movie. That, and I don't think Japan ever liked Max and Miria as much as the western audiences. Their valks always go up in price after the fact, but they've never been hard to acquire when they were new, that I've seen.
  19. Chronocidal
    I don't think anyone was dumb enough to actually buy that many of them in the first place. Though it might exist from someone buying up the scraps of destroyed ones?
  20. Chronocidal
    Actually, just occurred to me... what shade are the reaction missiles that come with the YF-19?
  21. Chronocidal
    Don't know how hard it would be to track down, but if you find a TV set of supers (either stand-alone, or one of the Hikaru/Max/Miria VF-1J bundles), they'll have bright white reaction missiles. I actually picked up an early, bad shoulder release Hikaru 1J super bundle mostly for the TV-style packs, and fixed his shoulders with pieces from an unassembled kit.
  22. Chronocidal
    If you do wind up selling them, I'd actually prefer to know what to expect. Though, I'd actually like to get a cheap busted one with a good leg I could use to repair the one I have laying in pieces. Most of it is good, but the leg is just destroyed beyond repair.
  23. Chronocidal
    The fact that he never found Obi-Wan either speaks volumes to Vader's incompetence, or he really didnt want to kill him to begin with. "Suuure, let me go hide on the guy's home planet, he'll never be back there again." On the other hand, given it was Tatooine... I dont recall whether it was in any of the movies, or just in EU material, but I remember someone mentioning Yoda's reasoning about Dagobah was that the heavy concentration of wildlife would actually make it very difficult to sense him through the force.
  24. Chronocidal
    That wasn't hunting down, that was lightsabering fish in a barrel. I'm thinking that in the years between episodes III and IV, there were probably a lot of individuals that had tried to hide, and got picked off slowly, by whatever means the Emperor thought prudent.
  25. Chronocidal
    If they were actually interested in profit, they would have re-released Ozma's armor a long time ago. In reality, I have no doubt that they've got some sort of market analysis department picking and choosing what's a good product release schedule. Bandai just seems to be very averse to any kind of risk, and actively ignores the international markets their Macross products appeal to. Whether that's due to pressure from Big West, or other internal sources, is hard to tell.
×
×
  • Create New...