Chronocidal

Not quite the same, since it's not pure white, but I wouldn't mind a version painted in these colors.

Sorry to take a bit, finishing work things up. It's kind of okay-ish, but I'd definitely rather have an HMR YF-19. Maybe weird to say, but I think this kit needed more parts-swapping between modes, just to look better overall. Battroid and gerwalk are pretty much fine, but fighter mode took all of major compromises.

Boy they made it stubby... did it look like that in the show? Or am I just fixated on how the old EU version looked? Also.. ok, wtf does "vintage" even mean then? This wasn't in the OT, not even in the sequels, and it's based on an EU design.

Yeah, the YF-19 is definitely smaller than HMR scale, it doesn't really match up very well. The pilot shenanigans is just Bandai's nonsense scaling issues with the HMR TV pilots. I basically slapped together the YF-19 without the instructions (I love treating these kits as a puzzle, since they snap together so easily), and honestly I was not very impressed with the shortcuts they took. Lots of parts that should be mirrored were duplicated instead, which made the assembly a little more complicated, but it wasn't too bad. I just wasn't impressed by the end result very much, at least not in fighter mode. Battroid is fine, but the fighter proportions and shape took a beating in the process of making a good battroid. It's a decent little fighter, and would probably look pretty good with some paint and detailing, but it needs new feet, and a fix for the ugly uncovered crotch block. Will see if I can get a side-by-side pic a little later,.

Heck.. I'm still upset Hasegawa never came out with a matching 1/48 kit for it when they did the YF-19.

Yeah, the cost of scaling down when you have a fixed resolution to work with, and LEGO has an abysmal lack of variety when it comes to cylindrical elements.

I was actually really waiting for a PF Ostrich, would have loved to pick one up. At this point though, I think they're better waiting to do that until a little after Bandai's VT-1 releases. That way, they can profit from the market that missed Bandai's release, and offer something (hopefully) a little easier on the wallet.

Ok, yeah, if that happens, I will absolutely grab one. That and another PF YF-19 please.

Not really surprising, I think Isamu's YF-29 is probably the only TWE item I ever saw go on clearance. Pity about Ozma's though. That one needed another run.

Probably silly, but I wonder if anyone would make a helmeted version of the Minmay figure so we can have generic passengers.

The YF-19 was a really quick build, maybe a couple hours, most of which was just cutting and trimming the parts. Really wish they would consider doing full 1/72 kits like they did Frontier and Delta designs, I'd build a ton of those.

I don't think it's anything about the individual singers, they all sounded great in the series. I think Delta suffered horribly from having way too many characters to manage, and the music not being good enough to stand out above the solo work in Frontier. That's just what you get with a group, and the more corporatized approach to music, when compared with Yoko Kanno writing solos and duets for the only singing characters you need to carry through the series. But we're -way- off of the topic at this point. I will bring it back around and say that I think the music in SDFM and DYRL is carried more by nostalgia than anything else for people outside of Japan, since I don't think that sort of sound was really ever that popular in the US. I guess it pretty well falls into the "city pop" genre which definitely was popular in Japan back then, but I don't know about the US.. maybe if you go back to the 50s and early 60s? Like it feels really weird to make the comparison, but Minmay would have probably been a good fit on the original Mickey Mouse Club.

Gotta admit... I kind of feel bad for all the VAs for Delta. I'm glad they've got ongoing work of a sort (and I don't follow anime enough to really know much about whether they're doing other series as well), but it feels like a far cry from the megablitz of everything we got from Frontier (and are even still getting).

That might have been it, I only put the minimum down for a "pre-order" since I don't think there was any solid release date listed.

Just searched on a whim, and this popped up. Hope someone who missed it can grab one! https://www.hlj.com/hi-metal-r-vf-1j-armored-valkyrie-hikaru-ichijo-machine-revival-ver-bans64968

I want to re-engineer this kit to make a better fighter mode so badly. The YF-21 puts it to shame.

For starters, the posts throughout this thread comment on a lot of the changes, but the comparisons to the kit in its own thread are also a good reference. Compared with the Yamato YF-21: Compared with the DX: The cockpit shape has been a sticking point mentioned in various points in this thread. It has nothing to do with transformation, and they just decided to make it a different shape. For me, the tails are also a sore point, because while it's a small detail, the tips are absolutely not supposed to be clipped flat. No source shows it looking this way, it's just the way Bandai decided to make it. What I'm talking about isn't essential functional design, it's purely in the aesthetic category. But what Bandai does makes no sense. There is no logical reason for why those details should not be a perfect match to the source material (you know, the thing they're actually calling it, and saying they're making), because those details have no bearing on the functionality of anything. They're just surface details. But apparently Bandai just cannot stand to make things accurately, and instead decides they know better what the design is supposed to look like. If there were functional reasons related to the transformation it would be one thing, but there aren't. The overall design is one thing, and they've done an "acceptable" job at it, but the changes in details they've made come down to aesthetic choices that should not be even on the table if you're making something meant to replicate something else. They just decide they like their own version better.

This doesn't have anything to do with size though, it is purely that Bandai completely ignored every source for what the YF-21 looks like, and straight-up redesigned portions of it. Not transformation mechanisms, but just the shape of the plane, it's wings and tails, and various completely static surface details. The 1/100 is far more accurate to the line-art than the DX even tries to be.

The really weird thing about this YF-21 though isn't that it's not accurate because of compromises for transformation. It's inaccurate in ways that have absolutely no impact on transformation whatsoever. Bandai just straight-up ignored what the design is supposed to look like, and went down their own path for some reason. Meanwhile, the 1/100 HG model kit nails all of those details that the DX ignored. Again, nothing about the transformation at all, it just looks like they actually cared to match the source material, instead of inventing details and reshaping bits however they pleased.

Yeah, no, I've never been impressed with KC's molding or other details enough to jump on one. I did put in a pre-order for one of the KO Yamato V2 releases in that scheme though. No idea when (or if) it will even happen. I might wind up painting one of my old Yamato V2 kits in that scheme instead, but I'd have to find some super packs for it.

Comparing this to the HG kit, I think it's abundantly clear that "accuracy" was not high on their list of priorities.

Agreed, but it's a whole lot better than the initial price, which is why I pretty much ignored it entirely.

Anyone after the Jetfire repaint, BBTS has them on clearance at the moment.

I mean, the old Matchbox one was hilariously mis-proportioned, just like all old GI Joe scaled aircraft. I'm thinking something like this. There were several companies that made these big 1/18 scale aircraft for a while, mostly WWII era, because those were slightly more manageable sizes. I managed to pick up one of the F-104 releases, but I always regretted not grabbing the F-86 and MiG-15 ones when they went on clearance at a local Walmart.

Honestly, the VF-1 isn't that big a plane, about the size of an F-16 I think. Anything up to about 1/18 would probably be manageable, and would put it in scale with all of those 1/18 planes some companies released years back. And at that scale, it would work pretty well with 3.75" figures of any style.