Chronocidal

Shoot, $70 for a professional costume? If I looked anything like Grace (and were a girl), I'd probably pick one up myself. What's really weird about that is that I have a sister named Grace... and even though she has no interest in anime, she might like that outfit for the style alone. She could pull it off too. Even has the glasses. As for the price... while it might be a simple outfit to make yourself, it'd probably cost that much or more to do it at home.

Good grief.. I ordered two 1/48 Fine Molds X-wing kits from HLJ back in august... I just got the shipping notice.

omgomgomgomgomg....win. If anyone can offer these for a good price, I'll probably pick up an entire squadron's worth... well, maybe. But at least a few. I've got a huge stash of 1/72 F-14 markings, and only one F-14 in 1/72. C'mon Overdrive/HLJ, make it happen.

Not really, you have to lower the legs and pull the arms part of the way out to gerwalk before you can get a good look at the problem hinge.

I'm pretty sure this is partly why the early Roy and Hikaru 1A releases have been on sale at HLJ (Overdrive too). Even over a year after the release, these two seem to come standard with broken shoulders. They're probably trying to run out their stock of the first run before a re-release hits. It does seem to be a time related issue though, rather than careless transformations.. I remember that early buyers mostly had good shoulders out of the box, and they cracked over time. Since that time, the unsold ones have been slowly cracking in their boxes. My Super 1A came the same way, shoulder entirely split.

On a lighter note.. I'm tempted to set up a streetcorner booth selling Hasegawa VF-1 kits on Christmas Eve. And I actually really want to learn Silent Night in Japanese... of all the tear-jerker bits in SDFM, that one always gets to me the most.

The shoulder tab scratching is going to happen no matter what you do really.. it's a key attachment point for the chestplate. What I did was file down the tabs on the inside of the chest plate some. They were rather jagged, which probably wasn't helping the scratching, and they were big enough that detaching the chest plate was tricky. The way the back boosters mount though... I have a mini-rant I need to post about this system. Yes, it's sturdy, but the way it's mounted scares me. It looks like it's seriously compromising the tail structure, not to mention scratching the tail paint on my Roy. I'll post pictures of this later, but I'm actually afraid the booster system is eventually going to lead to the tails snapping in half. I might be overly concerned.. but those tails should NOT be bending as much as they are.

*sigh* Once upon a time, I told myself I wouldn't get a 1/60 YF-19, cuz I thought it was ugly... Some time in the past couple weeks, I realized I might never get anything better, and decided to get one if I ever saw a really good deal. Today I saw a really good deal. I looked at HLJ earlier and paled at the $200 +shipping (Overdrive's been out of the original YF-19, and I like it better than the repaints).. Then I decided to check Ebay, and happened on one with about 30 min left for $130, with free shipping. It went up to $150 before it ended, but considering HLJ would approach $250 before I got it.... yeah, good deal. All told, got it for almost the exact same price as each of my M&M VF-1s. *does happy dance* Now I just have to resist the urge to get a YF-21 and VF-11B so I can focus on the VF-22s and VF-11C.

The feet look like they might actually have internal details this time as well... the connection between the toes looks like it's a round-ish nozzle shape. I'm not gonna get my hopes too far up, but so far this is looking leaps and bounds ahead of the DX VF-25. It might be the effect of not being painted shiny yet (the dull finish looks good, I wish I could get one in those colors ), but already this is making the 25 look incredibly sloppy by comparison. Reminds me a bit of the changes between the 1/72 and 1/60 YF-19... ok, maybe not that big a change. But the crispness of the detail here doesn't even look like it was made by the same company as the 25, let alone the same design team.

See, that I wouldn't get though... one run of such an icon? Heck, the whole arm mounted removable cockpit was made specifically with the orange VF-1D in mind, I can't imagine they'd stop producing it so soon... Anyone have any inside info on this? Maybe a tidbit from the Yamato site about it? I mean, HLJ lists it as backordered, not discontinued, so it seems they're expecting more.

Gah, being the first of a new month (almost) I was gonna go order my VF-1D from overdrive, but they're sold out. Anyone know how long they usually take to restock? Or if they even will? I can't imagine something that popular lasting only one run, but you never know... Edit: Sheesh, HLJ is backordered too.. oh well, hope they restock by Christmas so I can get myself a present.

That red looks better and better on the Milia every time I see it... I wish they'd used that color on the VF-1J actually; the color of mine looks more like a red wine color than actual red. It's just reaaalllly dark to me.

Better yet, the rear landing gear don't look like complete crap! More than that though, the actual physical detail looks about an order of magnitude sharper and more refined than on the VF-25. The details on the VF-25 always looked.. blurry to me. The contrast looks almost like the difference btween the v.1 1/60 and the v.2, it just looks.. sharp. Now, they need to take the lessons learned, and re-apply them to the VF-25. I might even consider buying one then, but it'll take a lot of improvements to make me prefer the DX over the kits.

I thought that was what MW was all about... I dunno about intentionally, but I know plenty of people have had multiple valks go to pieces on them. And I can imagine some people collect the broken ones cheaply, intending to fix them up. In any case though, it doesn't require broken planes to make. It's easy enough to remove the arms from the v.2 1/60s, or barring that, just dress them up in bandages. I don't remember which Valks tended to lose their legs.. but I have this picture in my head of a v.1 1/60 walking around with a crutch.

And here I thought he used sheepskin, and glued it together with his own blood.

Agree x10^23. <mortalkombatvoice>FAILTALITY</mortalkombatvoice> What you've suggested is like having Uwe Boll take Hamlet, and rewrite it to make a sequel to Dawn of the Dead, starring Ashton Kutcher and Miley Cyrus. Let's just put it this way. Macross without Kawamori is NOT MACROSS. If they want to make a robotech movie, fine. But the way your suggesting leaves the original creator's intent ENTIRELY out of the picture, and substitutes things from people who would want to make it their own, not make an accurate recreation. It's the same reason Willy Wonka wanted a kid to take over the factory.. anyone else would want to do it their own way. But again, this has gone way beyond the scope of talking about toys.

On a more humorous note, I may have found a new sig. Reminds me of a warning image from an old board I frequented (note, this wasn't meant for the same situation as here.. it was more when people were starting flame wars, so if it feels inappropriate here, I'll remove it). But anyway, yah, perfect transformation usually in my mind means "you don't need to take it apart and put it back together again to make it transform." Note, there are many ways for this to happen, but the VF-1 tends to stick with one of a couple tried and true methods. For a very different take on the sequence, there's one that even includes side covers as part of the arm mechanism in a recent post in one of the model sections. It was a very different take on the transformation, but no less effective than the standard Yamato VF-1.

Funnily enough, after seeing so many attempted Lego valks, that may be one of the few methods that would actually work for a perfect transformation Lego VF-1.

Just fyi, they have done this FREQUENTLY, and it's not so much a company as it is a designer for the anime, in this case Kawamori. There are a lot more designs for variable fighters than I think you're aware of. They're not going to redesign the originals (that would just be stupid considering the history they have established), but they've been adding new designs for over two decades now. Honestly, the only "Tomcat" style valks to me are the VF-0 and VF-1, and the VF-1 is even iffy to me, since it's so small (reminds me more of the F-18 in terms of proportions). The rest are very different in what they look like. The SV-51 is a clear descendant of Russian planes like the Su-27/35. The VF-17/VF-171 comes from the F-117. YF-19 takes elements from a mixing of foward swept wing planes, most notably the Su-47 and X-29. The YF-21/VF-22 is an obvious tribute to the YF-23. VA-3 Invader is a tweaked A-6 Intruder. VA-14 Vampire is a modified SR-71. I could go on. Suffice to say, they've already done what you're suggesting, and they've done it a lot. Whether toys are made of any of these is an entirely separate issue from them being designed in the first place. A lot of these designs have been drawn up, but until it gets featured in some new show, there's no reason to make a toy. At that point, you wind up with merchandise for it's own sake (ie, transformers) that might at some point get a series, not something that came from an established anime series, which is what Valkyries are. If this is what you meant by making valks more like transformers, I see your point now, but it's not going to happen. Transformers are "hey, lets make a robot of this because it'll look cool, and we can write a story for it later." Macross is more "hey, lets write this story, and it'll feature people flying these transforming planes." Where transformers will change design over time (Starscream has been MANY different aircraft designs at various points), Valkyries don't, because they have an established history. The VF-1 will ALWAYS be the way we see in the lineart. The only way that will change is if someone decides to reboot the series at some point, or like I said before, if Hollywood gets their grubby hands on it.

Actually not quite, you still have to remove the intake covers, but all the Yamato valks have those now. VF-25 eliminates a couple perfect variable problems by not even addressing them to begin with (they just ignored the intake covers entirely), but they still have interchangeable hands. Yamatos have these too, but they are alternates to the posable ones you can fold out of the arms. This topic really gets debated to death every time a new version of any valk comes out, and people start adjusting their perceptions of "perfect transformation" to match those of the companies producing it. If you really want perfect, you're gonna have to go to the lengths of some of the custom modders here, and make your own changes to a valk to make it perfect in your eyes. It all comes down to how picky you are personally, regardless of how "perfect" a company says it is.

So I was driving to work today, minding my own business, when one of the old Burl Ives songs from that stop-action Rudolph movie came on (station just started playing Christmas music already ). Forget which song it was, but doesn't really matter here. My imagination flashed to those new Verizon commercials with the whole Island of Misfit Toys deal... and my brain decided to do a cut and paste with goofy ideas. I have this picture of the island with all the borked up toys... ..and off in the distance, I see a poor sad group of old broken Valks sitting around a campfire. I almost spat out my morning coffee when the thought hit me, and the idea stuck with me all day, thinking "I should make a movie of this..." So from that basic idea, it grew into a full fledged argument over which broken valk had the worst flaw (as in, the valks sitting there around that campfire on a snow covered island, arguing over who was worst). Starts with a Tab-B YF-19, or something, and basically progresses through all the various problems Valks have had over the years (every brand, not just Yammies, although most would be Yamato based).. armless valks from busted shoulders, v.1 1/60ths who can't stand up from loose hips, etc.. maybe show a battroid Ivanov trying to flap his wings and take off. Then towards the end, a group of 1/48 Angel Birds walks up, and they're just all frustrated (all voiced by girls, just for comical effect). They're complaining because they don't get it... they don't have any QC issues, they're certainly the biggest VF-1, and one of the best sculpts ever, but they can't understand why no one wants to buy them, and their value keeps dropping... Cut to a giant shared thought bubble of all the other valks, and they're picturing all the AB VF-1s with giant bows stuck on their chest plates, and wearing fabric skirts (maybe put wigs on them, or even full fledged heads from girl anime figures)... and they all just point and laugh hysterically, while the AB valks look at each other and scratch their heads. I would love to do this myself.. but sadly I don't actually have any of those valks with those problems, I didn't start collecting until recently. I dabbled in stop motion in high school, and it'd be fun to do this (complete with pasted on facial expressions).. heck, if Yamato was more mainstream in the US, I can see this being a sketch for Robot Chicken. Anyway, I just can't help laughing at this, and it's only in my head. Probably kind of pointless to go into such detail with a random thought, but I'd love to see this done by someone who has the patience and talent. I might try and do it as a comic over time, but to mimic the original misfit toy sequence would be awesome.

Like I said, read the SDF-1 thread. You want stronger plastic? SOMEONE HAS TO PAY FOR IT. You want toys made of plastic stronger than steel??? You must be already living in the macross universe, cuz short of overtechnology, it's not going to happen IN A TOY. If it were that simple, sure, they should just make every valk out of carbon fiber composite pieces, and you'd have your sturdy transformer-ish valk, at a price only slightly less than a new freaking BMW. Materials that strong are usually reserved for military and industrial applications (ie, weapons, armor, automotive parts). You put that in a toy, and no one will be able to afford the stupid thing. Toy companies make toys because they want to make a profit off them, not cater to every hope and dream of potential customers. If they can't make a profit selling them, they simply won't make them at all. I'll repeat, do some research. Read the SDF-1 thread, and see what effect using fancier materials has on toys. There are things called production costs that come into play, and they will KILL the product. The recent rage over the $2000 SDF-1 should make this abundantly clear. And once more.. PLEASE use some freaking punctuation, spelling, grammar, anything to make your ideas more readable. There is no metal called "STEAL." My apologies for this rant, I'm just in a pissy mood today. Laptop bit the dust due to crappy factory included software, and I might have to spend a couple hundred dollars to make the thing work like it should have to begin with.

^ | | THIS. I don't mean to be a jackass here, but remember the old saying: "If you don't like it, make it yourself." People design custom valks all the time. Considering Frontier just came out, it's HIGHLY unlikely that any new designs will get made in the next several years, and even more unlikely that you'll get something so similar to real life aircraft as what you're suggesting. That doesn't stop you from coming up with it yourself as a fan made design. It probably won't ever become a toy or model, but make something fancy and cool enough, and someone might build it as a custom someday. Designing something yourself also tends to give you a very good appreciation of the design process that goes into something like the VF-1, or any other valk. It may look easy at first, and you might get lucky, but it can take a very long time to make a working design (this applies to anything in life really). Btw, I haven't heard anything about a live action macross movie outside of the robotech movie rumors. Frankly, I could care less if the original creator isn't involved at all. But on the other side of things, leave it to Hollywood, and you'll probably get your F-18 valk (seeing as how Transformers already claimed the F-22, Macross was always Navy-ish based, and the standard go-to Navy plane is the Hornet). It may suck monkey butt, and wind up as another bayformer, but you'll at least have your F-18 valk, and maybe some remote bit of satisfaction in getting what you wanted (which I will wager very little of this forum's population will share in ).

Again, THAT IS NOT THE ACTUAL VALK. It's a (bad) photoshop of the Roy. The blank one is all bare plastic/metal, seen in a picture a page or so back.

Just fyi, those are all photoshop jobs. The poses are identical to the VF-1S Roy publicity photos, and you can see where details are missing where they shopped over the yellow and black. Either that, or this valk comes with a single piece chest/canopy shield, because the seam between them is gone.