Chronocidal

Here's a fun question.. could you make a booster that's adaptable to either the Yamato or Hasegawa? I'd have to research how the booster attaches to see how difficult that would be, but wouldn't you have to remove/replace a good portion of the Hasegawa kit before you could attach the booster? Let's assume any attachment for the Hasegawa would be a permanent addition. If you designed the booster to fit the 1/48 Yamato VF-1 as-is, you might be able to make it able to be attached/removed. Maybe. Again, I'm not sure if that would be possible, depending on how it has to attach. I'm not thinking of something you'd pick up and zoom around as much as I'm picturing the booster/rail as an elaborate display mounting that you could remove the valk from if you wanted. Now, to attach a Hasegawa kit to it, you'd just need a replacement piece that fills in where the Yamato would go. Since you're not going to be removing the valk, you just need a filler that will give you something to glue the kit pieces to. While the booster itself would be able to accommodate a 1/48 Yamato VF-1, you just need a dummy plug that covers the openings for the Yamato, and provides the sections of the kit that would need to be modified. It'll definitely be more complicated to do that way, and I'm really not sure how viable the concept of a removable Yamato display is, but I can probably draw up a quick sketch of what I'm thinking if anyone likes the idea.

K then, guess they just changed packaging standards on this one. One funny thing to note.. they actually made the gunpod bigger compared with the first version. It's not huge difference, maybe about half an inch, but I might be tempted to mod the old one to fit now. Actually, I'm tempted to try out the gun from my 1/72 kit, and see if it looks a little more reasonable in size when mounted. Going by the one shot I've seen so far (about 5:15 into episode 7, right as Ozma calls for Planet Dance formation) the gun should only reach from the hip clips on the plate behind the landing gear, to the back edge of the ankle collars. That makes this gun about an inch and a half too long. On the other hand, the gun from the kit looks dead on. Go figure. I wonder how difficult and expensive it would be to scale up the kit gun, and Shapeways it? Probably no way you'd get the same level of detail, but it'd be interesting to try.

There wasn't any red tape anywhere, just an abunance of yellowish tape holding down the cardboard over the styrofoam. Usually it's just a simple few pieces holding it, but this had tape wrapped all the way around the edge, and folded over the foam. Just my speculation about the QC inspection. The outer box wasn't double taped, so if someone did open it, it happened before they put it in the actual outer box.

Yeah, it's just not worth that much to me. If someone who has contacts in Japan wants to try and order a spare replacement from Bandai directly, I'd be happy to compensate them for the effort/shipping, but I'm not going to ship the whole thing back for something that small. Since I doubt Ozma will ever be out of his armor in battroid, maybe I'll just repaint his normal crotch plate blue.

So, I got some time on a business trip to read a good chunk of book 2, and yeah. The book makes the anime actually make a lot more sense. Anyhow.. yeah. I'd actually really love to see a full blown redo of the anime. There's enough material there to make a 20+ episode series. The biggest reason the anime is so incomprehensible is just how much explanation and internal thought process got cut out for all the characters.

With NY, probably not, I think someone said they don't deal directly with replacements. If they do, great, but I'm not holding my breath on it. They do say on their site that they will work with the production companies about problems though, so I'm going to contact them to find out. Really though. It's probably 10 cents worth of plastic. Unless I can get just that part shipped to me, the process to get a replacement will be approaching the value of the entire thing, so I don't see the point in bothering with it. I could probably make one via Shapeways in less time than it would take for me to ship it back, and have them ship me a new one. Now, if someone here has a way to contact Bandai's customer service directly, that'd be great. But again, the cost to ship is going to be far more than the part is worth. Basically, this is just one of those ways that everyone in rest of the world has been screwed over because of HG's nonsense. I'm just glad that when I finally did get personally screwed, it was something relatively minor.

Well I have to admit, for as many other possible issues that could have shown their ugly head, I'm glad it's something relatively simple, and hidden (except in battroid). I might be tempted to get the super packs now, just so the spare crotch I'm using doesn't look out of place. Well.. I should say more out of place.. considering the ones with super packs are unpainted anyway. I've got the one from my Alto packs as a placeholder now, just to keep the head held up in fighter mode. I think though, that the main reason for this is that it looks like I actually got one of the ones randomly pulled for QC inspection (ironic, isn't it?) The packaging had a bunch of extra tape on it, as if it had been opened and re-sealed, and it was actually mis-transformed in the box. Whoever was fiddling with it had left the gerwalk support hanging down between the arms instead of folding it up, and it was keeping the entire thing from locking properly. However left it like that probably knocked off the crotch piece and never noticed.

Picked mine up about an hour ago, and have to agree, they definitely tightened this one up a good amount. Not perfect, since of course, the right shoulder joint is alreadly mostly limp, but the wings aren't flopping around. Unfortunately... one more case of missing crotch plate. I noticed the head sitting too low in fighter, and didn't realize it until I pulled down the legs, but yeah. They just flat out forgot it. Of all the ones to forget it on too, this is the one I might actually pose in Battroid. If anyone has a way to acquire replacement parts directly, I'd greatly appreciate help with this one. I don't think NY deals in spares, but if someone who ordered from HLJ could request the part for me, that'd be amazing. Although, I'm not sure how HLJ deals with spare parts from Bandai. I'm open to anyone with ideas about this one, really. Otherwise, I might just steal the crotch plate from Alto or Ozma and repaint it, since those two mostly stay in fighter, or with armor.. or maybe even not, since I don't think the white plate from Alto would look bad anyway.

Hey, they at least got that right. But yeah, I dunno about the gray plastic then, that's just lame. Maybe it's because they just couldnt justify the waste to mold more parts in that color. Dunno about the canopy though. I'm under the impression that they actually are using tinted plastic like in the 1/100 kits, so I don't think there's any coating you would damage by polishing it.

I actually wouldn't really count on that unfortunately, since off the top of my head, I'm not sure if any of Ozma's parts were actually molded in that gray. I could be wrong, but it seemed like all the sections in that partiicular color were only painted. If that isn't the case then they have no excuse, but it probably would have been cheaper to paint the pieces than try to mix a second color of gray plastic, just for that release. In the VF-25G's case, blue and white are used a lot, so there's no extra expense involved in using white plastic. Or, you know, they might have just thrown out another production run of just the particular parts tree containing those pieces for the Alto, and recycled the excess parts. Makes me wonder what kind of shenanigans we'll have to deal with when Luca's comes out, since I'm pretty sure his is another mix of similar shades that will probably get painted instead of molded in color.

THIS. BUT: Only if it includes Sivil showing up with a rocket launcher, and trying to kill them, and a massive hovercar/valk chase scene, involving the most massive pileup of cannon fodder in history, led by Leon driving a space Volkswagen.

Even recast in clear, I don't think you'll ever fix the fact that those stands are just ridiculously massive The huge pedestal/stand for my UCS Lego Star Destroyer was less distracting than those black monstrosities.

I don't remember off the top of my head what the conversion at the time was, but I know I got mine for 16,000 yen, plus shipping. I pretty much preordered with NY from the day they had it, so I missed the price hikes. According to the tracking number it hit customs already, so I might have it by the end of this week. Edit: Whoa. Seriously.. I just checked the tracking number on the USPS site: I don't think I've ever seen a package get processed, and arrive in LA the same day. Granted, there's a big time change in there to help... but still.

Sorry, I shouldn't have found this funny, but it definitely made me laugh. For all the supposed "accuracy" of the way the painted it, they still used the wrong colors. I really do wonder about those dumb white landing gear doors though, and whether they're just an animaton error. It looks pointless to paint them that way, and I know there is production art of the VF-25G that has the entire underside of the nose white. It just looks so much better that way, I wish they'd never corrected that goof from the first version.

Sheesh... well at least they lasted about half an hour. I have to admit, I do kind of wish I had waited fot HLJ too, but the peace of mind not having to wait around for a random half hour window does help make up for the higher price at NY, at least a little. And even then, it's nowhere near ebay price.

Yep, just got my confirmation as well. Now the wait begins until Luca's gets announced. I'm not so concerned about Michael's super packs (but will probably grab a set if they come with the speakers and/or fold booster), but I really hope they just bundle Luca's. I don't think he ever actually had them off in the series anyway. Hopefully they'll include the ghosts too, but I'm not going to get my hopes up much.

Well, sure, they're all robot mecha airplanes, I know. Thing is... Kawamori has a degree in aeronautics (as far as I recall). The whole point of the VF-1 in the first place was to make a plane that turned into a robot, not the other way around. On top of that, due to the plot, the robot part was supposed to be entirely secret. I guess no, they don't have to be realistic at all. But it's fun to imagine that they could be. It's fun to think about what valks would look like if they were real, and actually used by real life militaries. Given how many people go out of their way to detail models of them up as if they were actual aircraft , it's clearly a popular idea. Really.. this isn't so much about whether Macross has to look real or not. This is about the fact that despite the overwhelming treatment of valks as "real" aircraft from other sources, Bandai just can't seem to comprehend the concept.

I honestly don't know why everyone was so concerned with the rifle... the model mounts it just fine. It does, however, stick waaaayyyyy out the back. The bending though.. ugh.. You'd think after.. how many years has Bandai been making toys now? And they still don't understand how to prevent parts from warping? Or is this just a "We don't care about Macross" thing? Funny thing about the painting though.. seems like they're still ignoring the canon colors for Michael's plane. Looks like they got the underside of the nose colored as in the anime finally, but they're still forgetting the fact that the VF-25G doesn't use black paint. It's actually a darker blue-ish purple. Even the anti-glare panel on th enose and the tails aren't really black. I'm not really going to complain about that, since I think the black looks nicer anyway, but it's sad they just can't seem to figure out how to watch their own source material for reference.

Actually, it's a maintenance issue. Same reason you don't paint landing gear any oddball colors: so you can see if something's wrong, spot leaks, or damaged parts. Fluid leaking into your intakes isn't a good thing. And there may be more reasons, but that's just the one off the top of my head. Anything on an aircraft that needs to be kept clean you paint white, so you know when it gets dirty. Every fighter aircraft I can think of paints the intake interiors a light color, even planes like the Blue Angels. Outer paintschemes are one thing, and really, with all the fancy uber-tech stealth junk they have by the 2050s, it probably doesn't matter how you paint your aircraft. But you still have to maintain them. Painting critical and high maintenance areas all kinds of crazy colors is just making the job harder.

He just trimmed/flipped the YF-29's normal canards to match the ones on the Fire Valk. I love that YF-19 styled one, but... seriously people. Learn something about aircraft before you go painting everything random colors. Intakes are not something you paint as a colored accent. That's actually part of what bugged me about Macross 7... While pretty much every other Macross series has adhered to marking aircraft with standard military-styled painting conventions, Macross 7 kinda went and ignored a lot of standard aircraft things. I don't mean paintschemes mind you, I mean things like the white intakes and landing gear/bays, certain warning symbols, anti-glare panels, etc. Macross Frontier actually did pretty decently in that regard too, but now Bandai's slapping colors all over everything like a five-year-old given a toy airplane, and a paint marker.

Copilot's actually Klan, from the last episode scene. NY seems to be a bit behind sending out the shipping notices this time around, but I guess I'll find out what happens next week.

Honestly? My favorite scheme on this plane is the one I got from swapping around parts. I'm tempted to order a couple of the Ranka versions too to experiment, but mixing the darker blue pieces from the Sheryl version with the white fuselage from Alto's looks great. Not sure I love the orange canopy, but the purple clashed with the blue enough that it looks a little better. I still can't believe anyone at Bandai actually considers that fugly scheme a "VF-1S tribute." Though, given the other things they've completely missed before, I suppose it's not that big of a surprise.

Looks like all he did was switch out the wings and head for ones from the YF-19. Doesn't look bad at all in fighter, since the wings on the VF-25 are mounted so far back anyway. The rest though... eh. Gerwalk looks pretty good (though he should have stuck to the VF-25 shield), but the battroid trans just doesn't look good like that. I think it would be a lot better if he folded the wings properly, and laid down the backplate, but the way he left the nose sticking out propped up the chest higher than it should be, and the torso looks a heck of a lot longer that way. Still, a fun concept. I'd love to see it developed a little more, since it looks kind of like a less over-engined YF-29.

I keep hoping they'll eventually release unpainted versions of all their valks, especially if they offer a couple different mold color choices to start with. But, the more complicated their engineering gets, the less likely that seems now. Looking at the way the VF-19 is constructed, I'm not entirely sure that you could assemble one by hand, at least not without some kind of specially designed jig to hold parts in place. Those spring pins they've grown fond of are a pain. Not saying it's not impossible.. it just seems like a far cry from the easy screw-and-glue assembly of the VF-1.

I know the feeling.. really, all these sales have recently accomplished is convincing me that I should begin waiting for sales in the first place, since the various Macross 7 valks are hitting the 40% off mark, which puts them way under what I originally paid when they first were released. I'm still debating whether to cancel my pre-order for the super VF-17D, and wait for a sale later on.