Chronocidal

Whoa, whoa.. wait. They made the full battroid head? This brings up some interesting thoughts. What I really want to see is the parts breakdown. If they molded the whole thing in separate sections, it's just going to be begging for a full custom transformation. Funny, they actually beefed up the gullet area on this one. Not in the center, but along the sides, between the center gear bay and the intakes. That's definitely more accurate to all the lineart I've seen. Those little cylinders underneath shouldn't have been visible from the front on the 1/72. The gear look quite a bit better this time around too. The rear gear still might not be quite anime accurate, but they actually look semi-feasible this time. What I don't get is the way they made the wings "sweep"... I realize there are physical limitations at work, and the wings would intersect the legs if they swept like they did in the anime... but this just looks like a weird anime magic substitute.

HOLEEEE... Man am I glad I held off on the Gamlin. My wallet is crying right now. Crying tears of sweet, sweet, M&M joy. This is gonna be an expensive year indeed.. especially if I go for the full M&M quad set like I want.

*dies* Ok, ignore what I said about the story ending abruptly. I cannot WAIT to read whatever comes out next... So, now the question is this... would it be faster to wait for a translation of the upcoming Vol 10, or just learn Japanese myself?

This is likely the last in the season, unless they adapt one of the smaller later stories that took place after the festival. There are a couple of stories that fit in between the first season and Disappearance, so we still may see more.. or maybe, we'll see something like Someday in the Rain again. Personally, I kinda want to see story where the new class president forces the SOS brigade to do the Literature Club's newsletter. That's a bit later though, and I dunno how far. Spoilered in case anyone doesn't want to see stuff about what they changed Ok, that's enough spoilers for one night... maybe a whole week. My recommendation.. if you haven't read all the novels, do so. It will probably spoil things yes, but I think it's worth it. There's just so much untapped material in the later stories, I dunno how they're gonna do it.. if they do it at all. At this point, the series is really back to where it ended the first time.. all the new episodes took place within the original first season timeline. I still haven't given up on Disappearance yet though.. all the teaser art we saw for so long before this spring is specifically for Disappearance. All the hype, all the publicity, was focused on that story. If they don't do it now, I dunno if they ever will.

I never got F-15, but I ate up Janes F/A-18 for a while, and that thing is disturbingly accurate... like, borders on national security risk accurate. I got a chance to fly a real superhornet sim for a while, and the thing was spot on. I really wish more sims had that style cockpit.. best full 3D pit I've ever used. This IL-2 demo has given me a bit of hope for the genre actually.. I've never seen a console sim with separate flap/gear controls in that style (though I admit, I've mostly just played the AC series). After I finally got the throwup taste out of my mouth from hawx, it's nice to see SOMEONE knows how to make a flight game (I think it's even *gasp* Ubi! last I checked they still had the IL-2 license). It plays beautifully, and I'll probably have to get the full version quickly. I just hope they re-release the Hori stick for it, because a regular controller, or even that saitek aviator stick just isn't gonna cut it with this. I would've liked the option to fully configure the controls personally (really prefer the ace combat controls for throttle and rudder), but I understand why they did it the way they did. Having to hold the stick down to look around was a pain though, and I was always giving slight rudder when I tried to speed up (silly mixed axis controls ) As for the realism setting.. I actually had a much better time on the "simulator" setting, than on "realistic." Dunno why really.. seemed like the plane was much more controllable from the cockpit. Missed the padlock view (especially with the stick-press POV hat), but I could actually.. you know, pull back, and not have the plane go out of control every 3 seconds. I gave up on realistic, but completed the first couple missions on the sim setting. Oddly.. this isn't the first sim I've played that had that crazy stall problem. The MS Combat Sim 3 P-51 had the same issue. You could be going a good 400 knots in level flight, pull back into a 2g climb, and get blasted by stall warnings. What it boiled down to for that game was oversensitive flight dynamics settings, so this might be similar (but unfortunately, not moddable in this case). Seems someone finally managed to cram a nice balance of arcade and realism into a console sim. The arcade mode is fun for just shooting the crap out of everything, and the simulator mode is a great challenge. They even scale the score ratings for each level... I got 8 kills on the sim setting and got a rating of "Perfect!," but 40 kills on the arcade setting only got me "Great"

Well, the episode where Q poofed a mariachi band into the bridge and started handing out cigars and women was very entertaining. Also, you don't find it out until later, but Tsuruya has a much bigger part in all this than you may realize.

Even though I kinda got it to begin with (I think being a musician can help a lot with appreciating the show), I don't think I would ever want to be that mature. My single favorite moment from M7 still sums up most people's reaction to it perfectly I think... Chlore's face in FOTSW when that giant ballistic subwoofer punctures the bridge and blasts them all away with rock music. It's got that perfect mix of "OMG!!," "WTF!!" and "ARE YOU FRAKING SERIOUS??" As for the rest of the series, I think my sig sums it up nicely.

Random question about the Lunar subs, if anyone has seen them... is it just me, or does the video just flat bug out every now and then? I've been working on downloading their set of eps 1-10, and ep2 finished first. I keep getting nasty pauses, where the video just freezes a couple seconds, then jumps ahead appearing extremely distorted, then goes back to normal after a few seconds. I'm wondering if it's my video settings, or just a crappy encoding. Anyone else see this happen? I'm probably going to just get the Thora version instead, but as nice as the picture is, I was hoping to keep the file sizes a bit smaller, and get more episodes on a dvd. Edit: Ok, kinda found my problem.. still buggy, but the H.264 loop fix helped some. Now it only freezes up on stuff like the animated lyrics. I dunno what I'll do yet, the Thora translation is bugging me something awful. It's not the dialogue they're using (which is fine), it's like they didn't actually bother looking up the opening and closing lyrics... did they use some alternate romanization of the songs, or did they just completely fubar the lyrics? It seems to me like they didn't bother looking them up, so we get the Japanese equivalent of "Scuse me, while I kiss this guy."

What I kinda don't get with the head area... isn't the head supposed to be above those plates? Or was the VF-19 head area changed around significantly from the YF-19? Gullet is pretty big after all.. but I don't get it. Even with it, I still like the proportions better than the 1/60. Maybe it's being masked by that loose panel, but it still seems a nicer shape overall.. Oh well, I'm weird. The crotch plate probably is causing a few problems, but I really look forward to seeing some better views of this. One thing that might help.. how bout now? Edit: I think I may have realized part of what it is... Yes, this one may be the same thickness as the 1/60, proportion-wise.. but this one is wider. The leading edge design is obviously different that the YF-19, but it looks like it's much wider overall. Between the wider wing root pieces, different leading edge design, and wider shoulders, the wing pivots get pushed further out on this one. Mix that with bigger wings, and it the fuselage doesn't look so tall in comparison.

Sheesh, $50? I got my red leader ones for between $15 and $25 a piece... no ladder or R2, but still, $25 for a figure and a ladder? Heck, even the ForceFX one I got was only $25 I'll probably wait till they go on clearance. Then again.. my sister does work at Target...

Ahh, so that's it.. I just realized what those parts are in the previous picture. They plug up the big gap behind the thighs that the Yamato YF-19 has. You can see the outline of the piece on that battroid pic. And I'm not so sure the legs are drooping.. could be the angle, but it looks like the shield is just mounted really high above the rest of the body. If you look at the location of the wings on the side of the leg, they look like they attach just above the yellow spikey bit on the leg ring, which is about the midpoint on the leg. In fact, that's what makes me think the gullet is better... the gullet on this one looks about the same level relative to the bottom of the intakes as on the Yamato... but the legs on this one, especially in the intake area, look much more streamlined than the Yamato. The 1/60's legs always looked really bulky to me (probably due to landing gear, and also the tail mechanism, a problem the VF-19 gets to avoid due to the different tail design). I'll probably wind up being completely wrong about all this when we see some side views, but even with the gullet, I like the overall proportions of this one more than the 1/60. There does appear to be some real funkyness going on with the shield/head area though, between those ginormous shoulders... I don't see the head, and it almost looks like they either hid it under the shield, or left it off for fighter, and had some trouble with the shoulder mechanism. Oh, and one other difference from the 1/60.. I dunno which is accurate to the anime, but this one's canards don't fold.

Oh, I just meant I still wished Yamato had figured out another way to do it. For a compromise that big, I would've taken detachable gear in a heartbeat. Besides that though, even not counting the gullet... I dunno. The 1/60th YF-19 fighter mode has never really appealed to me for some reason. It just looks fat and bulky to me. The battroid looks fine, but I prefer fighter mode most of the time. For some reason though, I really like the overall shape of this VF-19 so far. Can't put my finger on what's different really, and won't know for sure until closeups are available. Could be the bigger wings (the 1/60's have always looked really stubby to me), or maybe it's because the VF-19 was always more bulky in the anime to begin with. I really can't say. The feeling might go away when more shots of the fighter come out though.

I was always under the impression that the Kai had almost identical wings to the YF-19. The VF-19 models optimized for space combat had the clipped wing design, the big ankle rings, and no canards. The Kai essentially is a cross between the YF-19 and the later VF-19 models, taking the same body style, and adding back in the large forward swept wings and canards. Strangest thing to me is that the shoulders seem a bit huge in fighter mode. Probably a compromise for a better battroid, but it kinda sticks out. I'd like to see a closeup of the head mechanism too. Otherwise, the fighter looks awesome.. better than the Yamato 1/60 even. Funny.. looks like they even managed to avoid the gullet. Probably since it doesn't have retracting gear, but still... I'd love to see what would happen if Yamato and Bandai teamed up.

You've just given me an epic idea for a repaint.

Most of the verniers are still black, yes, but only the ones that are detailed. The orange hexagons on the ankle, as well as the orange rectangles on the side, and the round dot on the shield.. those are supposed to be verniers as well.. at least, I've always seen them labeled as such. If not, I'd love an explanation of what those are. Anyway, I was always under the assumption that there were reasons a lot of the details were black, especially the borders around the leg bays (hinges, exhaust vents for missiles, etc). I'm just not really impressed with what amounts to a simple color swap. It's like they just decided to make random bits orange for the heck of it, without differentiating between colored markings, and mechanical features. The stripes around the nose sensors, and the front of the canopy especially... painting those areas orange just doesn't make a lick of sense to me.

Ok, that is by far one of the dumbest repaints I've yet seen. Seriously, this reminds me of those times when I was about 8 years old, and decided to add "detail" to some of my models. I took a paint marker, and decided to paint random panels different colors. This is exactly like that. THEY PAINTED THRUSTER VENTS FREAKIN' ORANGE. It's like they took the normal paint palette, and just said, "Ok, lets just put orange paint in the machine instead of black." ... Actually, looks like that's EXACTLY what they did... the colors are reversed. Everything that used to be black is now orange, and all the stuff normally red is black, even the intake warnings, and the borders around the nose sensors are now orange. Fail. The color scheme itself isn't that bad really, it reminds me of old test model markings. If only they'd bothered to give a second thought to what parts needed to be changed, and what needed to stay the same, it wouldn't look like some 10 year old had just photoshopped the thing. Still not quite on the level of the "lets paint it black and add a gold border to EVERYTHING" version, but not far off.

*gets his files and putty ready to fix the fail* I just hope the thing is styrene plastic. At least if they release it with the TCS chin pod, the lower sensor is still reasonably close to the original early A sensor pod. Really saddened by this actually... You'd think for all the work they put into the thing on little details, they'd at least get them right. It's like if Ferrari engineers designed the best car ever made.. but decided that they'd only sell it in 3 colors: throw-up puce, baby mustard yellow, and sunburn pink.

I just nearly crapped myself when I got my latest Lego email. Quote: "Celebrate the 10th anniversary of LEGO® Star Wars™ with The Battle of Endor™ and the Home One™ Mon Calamari Star Cruiser™!" Unfortunately, the title was a little misleading. It's not another UCS set (good thing actually, I can't afford any more of those), it's a playset based on the briefing room and hangar. It's not bad though, and the hangar comes with what I think is a new style A-wing.

One other thing to check on the cannons.. I don't remember if both ones with striped guns had this, but I do remember at least one of them having the front ring before the gun barrel painted a sort of yellowish color. I'm pretty sure Red 3 had this, but not sure about 5 (I believe 3 is the model pictured on the box of the old ROTJ edition MPC/ERTL kit).

Any particular details you're looking for? And are you just interested in paint schemes, or surface details as well? It gets complicated here, since many of the randomly colored panels on the ships were actually places where they slapped on patches of sheet styrene, or other spare parts, and incorporated them into the paint patterns. I have a set of instructions for the fine molds kit somewhere, but I don't remember how much detail they go into.. they're for the 1/72 kit, so a set from the new 1/48 one would be better. I can check my references a bit later, I think I have at least a few shots of each hero model from ANH, mostly Red 3 (and if not, I can get some screencaps from the dvd). I remember Reds 3 and 5 were very similar, with a few differences (the movie actually swapped them in a few shots if I recall), and Red 2 was an oddball that used some different parts, including a different canopy frame, and probably engines (funny thing... there's an old vintage J-79 mounted on a stand near where I work, and while the surface details are a bit different, I can never keep from thinking of it as an X-Wing engine.. the shape is identical). Also, I could be wrong, but I don't think they paid too much attention to the markings in Ep 6. The number of ships at Endor was so massive, I don't think they had more than one or two hero models made of X-Wings, and I don't remember any closeups of Y-Wings. I've only ever seen one large scaled X-Wing that survived that movie, and it appears to the one used for Luke (though it may have been used for a couple of the Wedge closeups, I'll have to watch again). It's also VERY different from the original models, and about twice as big. At that size, they couldn't use the same kitbashing techniques, so a lot of the details changed drastically. Funny, since Endor was so huge, ILM actually turned to the original MPC kits to make the bulk of the cannon fodder ships. And I'm pretty sure some of those models survived for a while... if you look closely at the X-Wings during the Star Tours ride at Disneyland, it's easy to recognize a few particular features of the MPC/ERTL kits.

Well, letting go of the controls worked back in the day when you didn't have any choice but to make aircraft stable.. no computers and such to get you out of a jam. Some planes were still unstable in certain areas, but for the most part planes had to be designed stable before they would build them. Course, I think only static stability is a requirement, not dynamic stability (whole mess of aerodynamics in this area, and the math gets very ugly, very quick). Nowadays, letting go of the controls works, but only because the computer will fix the plane for you. That's really what planes like the F-14 needed from the start.. God only knows why, but the F-14 was designed with an inherent instability in the yaw axis. There's literally a "OMG! FLAT SPIN! EJECT!" type warning in the flight manual... Get the yaw rate up too high, and a giant arrow in the direction of the yaw appears over all the cockpit displays. I'd have to read it again, but I think it says if you don't correct it within a few seconds, you should just eject.

Yeah, except they may have completely screwed over the people counting on profits from those episodes. Sure, the fan rage is funny. But unless they come up with some way to fit all 8 episodes on one dvd release, AND keep it the same price as the others, the sales for those episodes are going to tank. People will likely buy the beginning and end episodes, but depending on how the dvds are organized, 2-3 discs might be largely ignored by all but completists.

I love how that one looks like someone basically made a mech out of F-16 parts. I wonder what other armored core parts they have though.. just finished playing through AC:FA, and now I'm wondering how much you'd have to spend to get a decent sized set of parts to customize.

Yeah.. lack of any sense storywise, and an utter lack of aircraft variety made it pretty mediocre, in spite of the pretty pictures. Well, that, and they gave the uberplane what essentially amounted to an Itano Circus launcher. Fun in single player for a few laughs and achievements, but it completely borked multiplayer to the point where the plane isn't even allowed.

I'm not exactly sure, but I think the model name is 504x Scorpion EXO 900, or something close (it's in the image name). No idea who makes it.