Chronocidal

Kinda can't argue with the top two. Out of every other track I have from Macross, I find myself listening to those two the most (well.. discounting instrumentals anyway). Voices, the DYRL theme, and a few Firebomber tracks, I'd probably put right up there as well, but meh. Internet polls are weird that way.

Heh, didn't realize those were on sale. I just ordered 8. Thanks for the heads-up!

The demand really isn't all that surprising. When you consider how much the community here was waiting for them, and how many pack-less VF-1 releases have come out since the last time they were available, I can only imagine how many people would want to outfit all their new VF-1s. Personally, I never understood why the anniversary DYRL re-releases weren't bundled with strike packs to begin with. Hikaru's 1S was never even seen without them, and unless Roy jettisoned his before flying inside the Zentraedi cruiser, neither was his.

Definitely had the same trouble with my elbows. I initially thought they were glued in position by accident, and one of them wasn't even fully straightened out for fighter mode, so it didn't fit right. I disassembled things, and took the arms off so I could work them back and forth without stressing the joint to the backplate. I tend to keep things in fighter mode anyway, so it's not a big deal for me. Could be indicative of tolerancing issues showing up from the molds wearing out though.

Yeah, unlike all the relatively cheesy photoshopped boxes of all the other valks, that one's actually really nice.

Last I read, that project was stalled over tolerance issues (despite them already being made once). I don't know if it was ever started up again.

Oh, one thing about those stands that can really help stability. I've got a set of 4 SMS stands for my VF-25 kits, but I also picked up a plain one for my VF-27. That one has a small square extension that slots into the base octagon, and gives you a couple more mounting points for the support. That version will give you a much lower angle on the support, and might be useful for more extreme poses.

Eh.. if I was more into customizing, I'd have gotten more, but I already have 4 sets from my Hikaru, Max, and Kakizaki 1A bundles, plus one from my Hikaru 1S. I was only missing one for Roy, and my DYRL CF, so I'm covered now. If they go on sale somewhere down the road, I might grab one more set to paint up to match my VF-1D, but eh. I'm still iffy of crossing the line between toy and model, and I know painted stuff wouldn't hold up to the way I store my valk add-ons (I've got everything, missiles, gunpods, fast packs, all piled in a shoebox. )

Not sure, unless the old box had the rainbow canopy on it. Only difference I see is the 30th anniversary banner across one corner. Opened mine up and fiddled with it a bit, but had to do some simple work on it unfortunately. Nothing broken, just needs some tweaking. The elbow joints on mine are so tight they're nearly frozen. The secondary notched hinge works fine, it's the main first hinge that's stuck, and I might have to pop the glue to file down the pieces later if working them back and forth over time isn't enough. In the process of taking the arms off though, the pin holding in the hip swing-bar fell out. It was really loose for some reason. I just gave it some minimal knurling with a pliers, so that's fixed. All in all though, glad to finally be able to check this one off the list. I'd forgotten how crazy Yamato went with the tampos on this release.. they pretty much printed half the decals directly onto it. Makes me sad they didn't do that for more of them, but it's beautiful.

Well, you know.. I wonder how they'll treat free-shipping deals with the whole private warehouse thing they have now. I mean.. I ordered a pair of the Idolmaster Superhornets to build up in some VX-9 centennial markings I have, but I haven't shipped them yet. If I ask them to ship them during a free shipping promotion, do I get free shipping? Or, do I need to order something during the promotion for that? Or, if I do order something during a free shipping sale, and then ask them to ship stuff from my warehouse with it, would they get lumped in with the free shipping too? If they do that, I'll order more kits, because the shipping for those big Hasegawa kits can get expensive fast. I was considering ordering about 6 of their 1/48 kits, and the shipping was nearly as much as the kits themselves.

Think that has something to do with the way the shortest distance between two points isn't obvious on a map. Planes fly "great circle" routes, which appear as long arcs on projection maps. The distance from Narita (New Tokyo International Airport) to Anchorage? It's only a little over 3400 miles. Still doesn't explain why my VE-1 went from Anchorage to Memphis before heading to California.. but it all depends on the way FedEx's distribution routes work.

(read in Michael Caine's voice) "So, little fella, I'm curious. Is everything in proportion?" [Anubis nods unsure] "You know, your warp core, ammo storage, flux capacitor, spare 20,000 lbs of thrust... Yeah, don't be shy, let's have a look." [Anubis transforms to bot mode] "My lord! You're a tripod. What you been feeding that thing? Good thing is, if you ever get tired, you can use it as a kickstand!" [Anubis nods, smiling]

Well shoot, I'll have to get that PS3 after all. Maybe there'll be some good black friday deals. Don't know if I can justify the LE price, but I'm interested to see what the final box art looks like, and it'd go nicely next to my DYRL set. But yeah, don't rush to pre-order it just yet. The DYRL sets went back on sale later on, so I don't imagine this'll be really any different.

Wooo, my VE-1 and strike packs are sitting at the FedEx office for pickup. As if today didn't feel too long already...

Same, FedEx generally takes between 3-5 days. For me though, it's not so much the speed/cost as it is the fact that FedEx has the decency to stay open slightly past 5pm for all the folks in town that work, and will actually hold the package for me when I ask them to, so I can pick it up the day it arrives. I've lost count of how many times I've had to wait til the next day (or even week) because the post office doesn't seem to understand that I work during the day. Not to mention, they never bother to actually deliver anything even when I am there, because no one wants to bother walking to my apartment when it's so much easier to stick the note in my box to tell me to pick it up the next day.

Looking beautiful. I'll see if I can order a set soon and test it out, but I do hope there's a way to figure out the attachments for the legs without having to make an entirely new lower leg section. Darn, now you have my brain working overtime trying to picture what the issue you mentioned is. Does it just conflict too much with the tail section to add the plates onto the calves? Edit: DOH.. I just had a thought... too late to change things now, but I had a thought about the outer pylon. Technically, the rail you already have probably is the pylon.. so adding another pylon to that might look a little odd. I was going to suggest a different style outer pylon that you could attach another missile directly to, but then the question becomes, "which missile?" Having a universal mount is probably better anyway. But for a future idea though, maybe a single rail holding something like a sidewinder or AMRAAM would look good. Or just a plain rail with pegs to attach a single missile off one of the stock clusters (though.. the missiles would need work, since they've got the fins aligned wrong for a rail mount). Heck.. Maybe I should just start fiddling with this shapeways stuff and make a set of missiles and pylons to go with anything.

I still have to see this new short at some point (and the movie that's tacked on after it too ). I might wait til the video release, since my local theaters are like watching a movie on a portable phone through a cardboard tube anyway. Still think my favorite short is the magician act one though. I think I saw it right after playing portal, and I don't know if one was influenced by the other, but they certainly seemed like it.

Just a heads up for folks here, there seems to be a pretty large set of Hasegawa kits at good discounts right now. Looking through, there's a good variety of various scales, including a ton of 1/72 and 1/48 Idolmaster kits at 50%+ off. I normally wouldn't be interested in the crazy markings on those, but honestly? For the discounts they're offering, I'm grabbing a few of the kits to build up in normal markings I've gotten elsewhere. This sale is probably the cheapest I've ever seen 1/48 Hasegawa Superhornets and Tomcats.

For what it's worth, at the time I saw them, I thought the prequels were pretty awesome too, but I expect a good amount of that was my buying into the hype about them. Well.. II and III at least. Episode I was okay, but my best memories of that entire movie came from the N64 racing game that came out of it (and it's still one of my favorite Star Wars console games to this day). The thing that killed them for me was that I felt like the characterization just sucked. Qui-gon and Obi-wan managed to do a decent job I think, but everyone else just seemed so apathetic about everyone and everything around them. I mean.. I'm not going to claim the acting in Episode IV was all that great either, but at least they had fun with it, and the characters were a lot more entertaining to watch, specifically because they didn't all get along. Plus.. I'll never understand what happened to John Williams between ROTJ and Episode I. He seemed to completely abandon the Wagner-ish characterization and melodies used in the original movies, and went completely wacky with percussion, random brass, and whatever else he could find. There's pretty much one theme from each prequel movie that most people actually remember (Duel of the Fates, Across the Stars, and... whatever the Obi-wan/Anakin battle theme was called). It's just sad, because Williams ignored so much of what made the original trilogy soundtracks so memorable, and went in a completely different direction.

I can't blame him for that.. there's such a religiously devoted fanbase to the original stories now, that there's no possible way to meet their expectations. The novels definitely weren't universally liked, though I'm not sure they were quite as disliked as the prequels. But they also had a much smaller audience. Basically... no matter what's done now, it won't satisfy some, because the fanbase has become truly impossible to please as a whole.

Sweet, got my VE-1 and strike pack sets going to ship now.

Where'd you order from? I'm looking forward to getting this myself.

I'd guess no on this, since those examples from before showed it barely able to support a VF-1 with strike packs. The mounting points of the VF-19s and VF-17 are even further away from the CG, and it's going to be quite a strain to get those to stay up I think.

I still love the take that several of the fanfics have gone with... that all of the "canon" endings are actually happening simultaneously in various dimensions of the multi-verse, or possibly are all repeated iterations of the same events, similar to the "Everything has happened before, and will happen again" attitude seen in BSG. It actually makes a ton of sense in some ways though. One fanfic actually goes so far as to explain that the other Shinji that appears in Shinji's thought processes is actually another Shinji from an alternate universe, and has his alternate self commenting on the differences between them. Yeah, they really have no fourth wall. Ridiculous as they are, I'd really love to see some of the fanfics done up as actual animation, just because they'd be so insane. "Nobody Dies" and "Shinji and Warhammer 40K" in particular, just because I seriously want to see the hilarious nonsense they deal with in real time. Gendo having a fight to the death with President Stephen Colbert comes to mind, or one of the Eva's somehow picking up an AI personality based on a mix of Optimus Prime, Liberty Prime, and Robo-Nixon.

Team up, nothing. After all the nonsense the prequels introduced, the emperor would probably dump Vader for Sephy like last week's laundry.