Chronocidal

I don't think that's quite the same thing. The money saving in question is related to the fact that they didn't bother to make a second half to the part, and cover up the gaps. It's really easy to close up those spaces if you make the parts out of more than one molded piece, but that adds both material cost, and assembly time. It's why so many third-party mod kits involve covers for the hollow parts.

I can't call the complexity a benefit at this point, especially when discussing Bandai. I had to adjust the tightness on one of my YF-19's hips recently, and the sheer number of parts involved in that hip joint hurt my brain. The stresses involved in moving that stupid joint were enough to make me think I was going to shatter the entire hip, which has happened to people before. They need to lay off whatever engineering related drugs they're on, because their complexity is flat out detrimental to the products at this point. They can't even use the excuse that they're making a market for spare parts, because they don't sell any in the first place. It's like they're trying to drive artificial scarcity of their product by making sure a certain number just completely break apart and fail within some amount of time.

I didn't really mind the fact that the VF-4G was so plain. I'm thrilled to finally have the Flashback 2012 version, because that's what I wanted all along, but I'm more than happy to have the original releases to repaint and decal up in other schemes. One of these days, I want to get around to either a classic Wolfpack or Sundowners scheme.

I've relied on FM to get several of the Calibre F-14 releases.. which they somehow shipped before an order direct from the CW site did. It's a short hop and a jump north of me, so they get here fast once Flying Mule gets their stock in.

Never tried the baking soda, but I can vouch for general thick CA being perfect for filling gaps and rebuilding bits of broken kit. Lately I've been using it as a filler when my 3D printer leaves a gap, or there's a glitch in a layer. I've also fixed broken-off corners and edges by CA-ing a scrap of plastic in place and sanding to shape. I probably could use acetone for the same purpose, and make some ABS putty, but I don't have a good resealable container for it yet, and I'd rather not risk melting something by over-application.

Ok, the "BIC WEST" logo is just straight up trolling now. XD

I'm hoping it actually gets delayed more though, because that plops the release right in the middle of Christmas shopping.

At this point, I'm just waiting for some proper planform views of the top and sides. I think the reason they haven't shown anything like that yet is because they are fully aware of how awkward the proportions are going to be when seen in full. My biggest concern is that the tails are going to literally be so far forward that they aren't physically capable of acting as rudders, because they're so close to the center of lift.

Honestly, I have no complaints about the leg, that's an ingenious mechanism to get them to fit properly.

Neither of which look anything even remotely like the heels Bandai slapped on their YF-19. They completely misinterpreted the design, giving it VF-1-style heels. The actual heels need to rotate a full 90 degrees to lay flat, because they're paddles like the VF-4.

This has been driving me nuts since day one, along with the incorrect tail shapes. Bandai gonna be Bandai.

I honestly don't think that will even have any effect on such a feature, since the arms aren't where the gunpod cavities are anyhow. I really wonder if they're going to do more than just the YF-21 though. If not enough people are interested, we're probably going to wind up with another Sv-262 situation where they just never revisit it.

I think the cartoony proportions of this one will probably help it look better than the YF-19 did. And boy oh boy do I hope they don't fubar the heels again.

Ah, looks like he's going for the classic "billboard disguise" camo pattern.

Ok, that is.. wild. I'm used to seeing transforming planes smuggling a robot under them, but never a car. The car and animal modes look great, and the plane is at least hidden in those, but the aircraft mode just looks really funky with that much junk under it. Still.. not really any worse than what the official releases usually come up with.

Coming to the last bits of my print project before I'm going to call the model "done." Came in at about 200 hours of printing, and what might actually be about 700 grams of plastic, or about 1.5 lbs. It's a hefty model, and I was relieved that my original display stand design from my smaller version was still plenty sturdy to support it when scaled up to match. Big upgrades for this version were mostly the cockpit, and the greeblie panels that I had left blank on my first version, since I didn't have good references. In the end, I just made stuff up that looks decent where I couldn't find decent images. Tonight.. I decided to get adventurous and see if an idea I had held any merit. I'd been thinking of buying/making a vacuform machine to make canopies, but not decided on that yet. I tried something much cheaper. I printed a two-piece mold, heated a segment of a disposable plastic salad bowl in front of a space heater, then jammed it between the halves, and clamped it shut. Took a while to trim, but I was pleasantly surprised to find the material was actually able to be sanded on the edges. I'm kind of blown away it worked at all. What helped was that the material had a much lower melting temperature than the ABS mold (only slightly too hot to hold by hand, even), so I was able to just sit the mold in front of the heater and let the plastic go limp on top of it before clamping it. Material quality is kind of literally garbage, since there are a lot of little scratches and wrinkles I'll never be able to polish out, and I probably need a better heating setup to get it evenly soft, but as a proof of concept it worked great.

FYI, HLJ actually has one more in stock as well, might be a better deal depending on the shipping and currency conversion. https://www.hlj.com/1-60-scale-kanzen-henkei-vf-4a-lightning-iii-hikaru-ichijyo-use-premium-finish-aca82155

I think the issue with the Bandai pic is that they used a focal length that gave the picture almost no foreshortening at all.

What I'd like to know is what all the space ahead of the shoulders is being used for, if anything. Yamato's was absolutely jammed into the belly, and Bandai's looks like there's just a pile of empty space ahead of the shoulders here. Also, I tweaked the arm on the right side. I would happily deal with a wider body if they would beef up the arms enough so that they could be longer and thicker, which would let you collapse the elbows and hands into them to make room. The way the hands are stored right now looks incredibly sloppy.

This, x1000%. That's just the weird nature of the YF-21 in a nutshell. The vast majority of the fighter mode has little to no effect on the battroid, because it's essentially a shell-former. The nose is a free-floating part, and can be any length they want. The arms are dependent on the overall length of the plane, and the legs have to fit under the belly, but Bandai just went off the rails in this case, making the main body huge to fit the legs, and then slapping on pathetically shrimpy arms that don't take advantage of the space they have, when making them longer and bigger would improve every mode. Fortunately comparing all of the images can give a mostly complete picture of how the top view will look. The tails are just.. not in a good place. The underside view shows how everything is packed into the belly, but if they had tried to collapse the hands or make them into fists or something, they would have had a ton of extra room to make the arms bigger, and the whole design is worse off for it. This isn't scientific in the slightest, because I tweaked the trailing edges of the wings in the original art to match better, but this gives a nice overview of why the back-end bugs me so much. I filled in the tails by overlaying the underside view, and lining them up. The proportions of the back end of the plane just feel out of whack. All things considered, this doesn't look terrible in these shots, but I think they're obscuring the problems by not showing the whole plane in view from the top or bottom. The length of the arms just throws so many things off. I'm honestly undecided if I'll grab one. I feel like I'll probably try, but if I can't, I probably won't be terribly heart-broken. Edit: Just as a what-if, imagine if they actually extended the arms, and then made the tails as big as the line-art (and the accurate shape, while we're at it):

Which makes the new YF-19 Empty Set all the more ridiculous, honestly, since its packs are even less material.

I was going to suggest the same, though the length of shaft you can use is limited by the screw mounting the part. I think it should still have plenty of depth for the strength necessary though.

I wouldn't say those other pictures actually look good, this one just looks even worse. The nose has always looked far too short to me, but I would like to see an actual flat scan of that photo, as well as the facing page that looks like it details the transformation.

It's because they are being stupidly faithful to bad animation, and they keep looking at the frames where the pilots actually were microscopic, instead of deciding to use a brain cell and make something that actually makes sense. Funny, that's even one of the better looking stills from that episode, but having that much space in the cockpit, let alone carrying a baby in her lap, is absolutely insane. Her arms don't even look long enough to reach the instrument panel.

I really hope that's just the magazine photo artificially foreshortening the fighter mode, because that looks REALLY squished up front, like bizarrely out of proportion. I kind of want to say the battroid looks a bit better? But it's probably just my reaction to not seeing it splattered with five gallons of tampo. Hips are still Urkel-high, canopy is still entirely the wrong shape, and the upper arms still look like spaghetti. The arms in particular are just painful to look at.. I can't comprehend how they could blow out the backside of the thing to as big as it is, and not use any of that space to give the thing beefier arms. If the Yamato version needed Omega Pants, this one needs Omega Arms.