Chronocidal

You know, this unfortunately does not surprise me at all. This is the same thing that broke on my original Yamato 1/60 YF-19. The shoulder design has honestly always been bad, and insanely difficult to get into to repair because of the shoulder covers. The original release was just plagued with original recipe VF-0 explodium, and those parts disintegrated. This.. just makes me think something was tightened down too much. Fortunately, this might be a fairly easy thing to replace with a printed replacement part. It's really not a complex design.

Yeah, that is definitely something that the Bandai YF-19 mold suffers from, and that's the need to massage it and tweak it for potentially hours to get everything to fit into place correctly. I like how it looks in all modes, but I very rarely transform the Bandai one. The Yamato/Arcadia VF-19s and YF-19 all feel much easier to transform.

The art style actually kind of reminds me of some of the really early 1950s carrier-based jets. The shape of the pod on one side looks a lot like the intake of an F-80 or F-3D Skyknight.

I would definitely recommend looking over Jenius' review on Anymoon.com for a good rundown of the two, since he very well covers the comparison of the two at all levels. https://anymoon.com/blog/?p=8151 He also reaches the same conclusion I did, as it seems others have as well: If you can afford it, just get both. There is the oddball of the VF-19 Advance, if you can track it down, but I do not know how that would compare to the other two in terms of price. Personally, I like that one's design slightly better than the DX YF-19, just for the different feet, and what I consider a slightly better paintscheme (even though it's SMS markings, vs the original UN SPACY version). It also doesn't include any of the missiles, using the Frontier-style wing boosters instead. The DX and Arcadia YF-19 releases both have the full set of missiles to load on the plane, though Bandai also includes the fold booster, as well as the special arm cannon mount seen for a few seconds in the animation, and they even adapted it to work in fighter mode (albeit, a bit awkwardly with a gunpod). My personal take on the two? The Arcadia feels easier and more intuitive to transform, is closer to the original animation (both in proportion and paint/markings), and nails the classic hand-drawn look. The Bandai feels more like a transforming model to me, with a much more involved and intricate transformation, slightly better flexibility for posing, much more painted detail (I would personally call it overdone), and an overall look that feels closer to the slimmer Frontier-era designs, almost to the point of looking like a transforming version of the Hasegawa aircraft-only kit. Note.. they also both suffer from having a generally ineffective "high speed mode" mechanism to fold the wings back. While the missiles are a great idea in principle, the extra weight will probably send the wings flailing around out of position if you handle them a lot. The Bandai version has a slightly better mechanism, in that it has some amount of a ratcheting feel to it, but it can still easily go floppy. If you aren't afraid to do the work to take the wings apart, there are things that can be done to fix this, but it's tricky work, no matter which version you decide to get.

True, it was consistent, I just always thought it looked dumb. It made me think it was just something unintentional that no one ever caught, since the color schemes on the other planes were all consistently unlike that one.

Like so many of the design and texture choices in Frontier though, it feels as though Bandai stayed true to things being dorked up by the animators in the first place. Aesthetically? A whole bunch of things they did make no sense, and the only excuse I can find is "Oh.. the animators did that... I guess we should too." The "NO STEP" markings on the underside of wings is very likely the same thing. Does it make sense for that to be printed in zero-g environments? Sure.. except that if you're floating, you don't have to "step" on anything. I've always thought that excuse only exists to cover the fact that the animators mirrored the textures on top and bottom of the wings.

Definitely going to grab one of these.. fingers crossed I don't get screwed twice and have the crotch plate missing on both releases. That's actually part of why I was glad I picked up the YF-25.. the blue was a close enough match to look good on Michael's original release. Personally.. I think it even looks better, due to having the colors flipped. Michael's valk always had a few weird color choices that stood out in a bad way, like the bottom of the nose being blue with white gear doors, for some reason... when the original v.1 VF-25 actually had the full underside matching somehow?

Oh, ok, that explains a lot about the shape and arrangement of things.. though that opening on just one side throws my asymmetry alarm off the scale.

Maybe so, but I'd be interested to see how much you'd really have to swap out of the total contents of the kit, just in terms of plastic volume. Reason I think there would be so much commonality is mainly because one of the things I will never forget about building the VF-25 kits is just how much of those kits was piles of ABS internal structure to snap the exteriors onto. There would be a lot of changes to the external parts, and a whole bunch of new sections like the gun turret and extra engines, but the skeleton and transformation of the YF-29 is pretty much identical.

I still don't understand why they never made a 1/72 transforming version. The thing uses 75% of the VF-25 parts in the first place.

Which one is the 89 version, the original movie toy with the fold out handle and suction dart launchers? I always wanted one of those back then, but never got around to getting one. That new design isn't bad, not a terrible upgrade, but I think the "ear" prongs look a bit too spindly.

I kind of feel like you could slap together a competent EXO Squad game as a mod for one of the Mechwarrior titles.

I'm thinking this one is going to be the fighter-mode display permanently. Might even tack the wings in place so they stay put, and never transform it.

I saw it available, but decided I don't need a second copy. One thing to do though is make sure to configure the site to pay in yen. I don't recall how I did it, because my account's been configured that way for years, but it saved me a fair amount on my last few purchases there because of exchange rate shenanigans.

Rare? Maybe. Sought after? I actually kind of doubt that. It's unique.. that doesn't guarantee people will actually want it. Not saying it's not a good product, but it's a non-canon variant from a lesser-known series that no one was ever asking for in the first place.

What, you mean you're not dedicated enough to buy a plane ticket to be able to attend Bandai's event? Clearly you're just not worthy of owning it. Yeah, Bandai can go suck an egg. A part of me misses when Macross was an obscure franchise supported by companies that made products the fans asked for, and produced enough to meet demand.

Getting even better! Itano Circus is in full effect! He just needs to get it to do the CFA-44's multi-target spam. mutters something about "those crazy Belkans.." He's got a few others up as well, showing the various weapons systems working. He managed to mimic the Falken's laser system with the gunpod, firing as individual shots, but opening up to fire the full beam.

I think they've had to outsource their manufacturing and assembly to alternate sites ever since the 31AX releases started. Something is just off about their manufacturing and assembly. All sorts of weird inconsistencies that are incredibly uncharacteristic for Bandai's usual molding quality. My Max YF-29 has a couple of mis-drilled holes, and so does my Mirage 31AX, making various parts rotate incorrectly, or just sit completely out of alignment. I'd like to think this might be solved by some careful warming and warping of the plastic part to get it back in place, but I can't tell how badly misshapen it actually is.

That reminds me.. I need to get back to work designing a new wing hinge for the DX version to match my Arcadia mod. (And seeing if I can disassemble Bandai's abominable engineering without destroying it..) I love them both, but the stupid wing hinge design is the one thing that drags both designs down pretty equally. Bandai's version even ratchets to a point, but it doesn't stop the wings from floating backwards, and it's actually worse than the Arcadia in that regard, since the wings float in the glove, instead of stopping against the leg.

It was, but I think several retailers did pick it up. I got mine at HLJ. What I don't know is what will happen with any cancelled pre-orders from other sites, and whether they will be stuck with stock to clear out after the dust clears.

I don't believe the A and S heads are interchangeable, but the A and J ones seemed to be. I don't recall if it's because the fuselage cut-out for the head is differently shaped, or because of the unique neck design of the S, or possibly a combination of both. It is, however, really easy to swap around a few parts and get nearly complete DYRL Roy 1S (with accurate tail markings, even! ) Just pop the instrument console out of the cockpit, and throw a DYRL figure in the cockpit (either repainted, or an aftermarket/Hasegawa). The only differences will be a few of the tampo prints, like the extra TV-style warning markings, and the black head arrows instead of yellow. If we ever get a DYRL Max 1A, you could technically do the same thing for a Max 1S by swapping out the colored parts. I mixed and matched pieces of broken Yamato 1/60 Max and Roy valks in the past to do the same thing.

Honestly.. I don't want to buy anything from Bandai until they figure out exactly what's going on with their production lines. All of the VF-31AX releases have been stinkers, my Max YF-29 had a few mis-drilled/mis-aligned pins, and the paint alignment on the past couple of HMR releases hasn't been great. I can't shake the feeling that they're dealing with second-rate backup production lines, because these are stupid errors that shouldn't happen. The paint alignment is one thing, but the fouled-up pins and tabs that don't work are right on the bleeding edge of "this product can't transform correctly." I think the only VF-1s I still want to see are the VT-1, and a CF-1A.. and MAYBE M&Ms. But I don't want to shell out for something that's going to be mis-handled, mis-assembled, and require a bunch of fixes out of the box to function correctly.

I thought they were? At least a small amount. I've never wanted anything weathered, because it's just one more thing to screw up while transforming them. Same reason I really hate unnecessary diecast. All I wanted was them to print the rest of the markings.

It's been so long since the original orders, I have to wonder how many people either cancelled it a long time ago, or just completely forgot.

It actually reminds me of the old pseudo-stop-motion style that I think was used in the LEGO Movie? Hard to say, since it varies a lot, but it definitely reminded me of Nightmare Before Christmas/Corpse Bride.