Chronocidal

Yeah, I was just looking for those, and found the old listings for the WG + VOB and it's marked down for some reason? Weird.

I have no idea what that title is supposed to mean, but it looks nice. I assume these are upscaled versions of their previous AC kits? I'm getting PG vibes out of the display and styling. ... OH.. they're making finished figures? Ok.. not a fan of that design, but if they put out a White Glint, I am SO down for one. I have to assume they're planning for the overbooster as well, since the connection port looks like it opens up.

As long as it's the darker scheme seen in the more recent photos, I actually really don't mind it. A little gaudy, but nothing like the neon turquoise it used to be. I'm just thrilled to see a NEW design after.. how many years has it been?

Have to wonder about this too, it doesn't have that many accessories, does it? Maybe they packaged the stand in the main tray, instead of under it.

I think I'd just use something like guitar string, if you have some laying around. I know my dad used to use that for fine details on some older kits. Now.. the wait begins for Bandai to make one in 1/48th so I can scale that up.

Yeaaah.. The animation is impressive, I'll say that much, but it doesn't fit the feel of the original. I think the transitions from slapstick to serious felt better without the hard CGI details.

Far as the "used" ones go.. maybe it would be worth finding one of the "third party" versions to cannibalize for parts?

Yeah, the stubby pylons are actually one of my biggest issues with Bandai's DX VF-1. It's kind of unbelievable that the 1/100 HMR weapons have physically longer pylons than their 1/48 counterparts. If I ever get around to it, I'll probably try and make some custom pylons to use on 1/48 Hasegawa weapons to mount on my DX valks.

Yeah, that's a tricky situation. You kind of have the reverse of what I planned ahead for, buying a couple of the kits to act as spare parts sources for my valks. You might be able to find broken or worn-out ones on ebay that you could take apart for replacements, but I'm thinking you might have better luck modeling the part, and having it produced by a 3D printing service (or maybe a member here, if they can do it). Those parts are still produced for the Arcadia releases though, so maybe you could try and find someone in Japan to request a replacement?

Sheesh, every time I see those resin prints I lament that extrusion printers aren't nearly that precise. That looks fantastic!

I think the most frustrating thing about the character is that she's a cheap and, at this point, exhaustively overused tease. They DO NOT want to do anything to expound on anything involving who it is.. except implying REPEATEDLY that it's probably a character that EVERYONE has wanted to know what happened to for forty years. They don't want to commit to making the story, they just keep stringing the fanbase along with cheap dribbles of nothing. I didn't mind the use in Frontier much, because they just sounded like a shady background figure. Now.. it's just the worst kind of fan-disservice to keep teasing who it is over and over without being willing to actually even attempt to fulfill anyone's expectations. Which.. maybe they honestly can't, and that's why they're not willing to try. I don't even know anymore.

Honestly, this sounds like it's falling pretty well in line with the credit value scale seen in ANH. Han wanted 10k, and Luke countered you could almost get a ship for it, then I'm assuming the 2k came from Luke's speeder. Not to make any overly-broad comparisons, but if you consider the difference in value between buying a car and buying an aircraft as a very rough factor of ten, that actually lines up pretty well. It's not a great comparison, because you can't even pretend Luke's speeder was new, but who knows what the market was like on Tatooine.

Did not realize she was the same age as the Queen. Absolutely one of the most familiar faces in film and television, and she will be sorely missed.

Glad to see they fixed the upside-down disruptor cannons on the trailer. Think they need to extend the outer wing baffles outwards more though, it's like they based the shape on the borked-up version from the recent Polar Lights kit, which cut them off rather than rotating them upwards. Ok, now where's a Grissom and TMP Refit? Honestly.. The Grissom's proportions would probably work pretty well as a playset, you can just make the entire dome section a bridge.

I don't know if it makes much difference, but I did see that the BBTS listing offers $4 flat-rate shipping, so maybe that offsets it a little? I don't know what sort of insurance or speed that will give you though.

Probably, but I'll probably wait until release to see if it's available. I'm not sure I want to pay the import mark-up on top of local shipping that may not even be less than international at this point.

Hah, I guess I'll be sitting this one out, I completely missed that the pre-order was last night. S'okay, I'm good with the original releases, and I need to stop blowing money on duplicates.

This is about the clearest picture I can find of the back of the foot, and I think unfortunately there's a fair bit of magic going on in general. Problem is, then in fighter mode it has to morph into this: If I'm being fair, I think they got the shape of the whole foot mostly right, but it's way too big. The toe looks good as a foot, but has the same oversize issue the DX YF-19 and VF-19 Advance have, it just doesn't fit into the leg. The bigger problem with the heel is that the heel hinge needs to be relocated, and have its range of motion doubled. Right now, the heel is only rotating halfway to where it's supposed to be, with the ground-contact surface of the heel becoming a horizontal panel in-line with the exhaust. I think that actually would be the best solution, a complete foot replacement for fighter mode. I can appreciate the animation accuracy for battroid, and the bigger proportions, but nothing about that works even slightly for fighter mode. For all of the ankle issues Yamato and Arcadia had with their VF-19/YF-19 feet, I still think they managed the best balance between modes. They got the right shape for both the toe and heel, and they're undersized just enough collapse inside of the leg.

Ok, that's unexpected. For $30, I'll bite. Even if I never transform it, that's cheap enough to warrant rebuilding the feet, and this will likely make a nice unobtrusive display for my desk at work.

It's not a translation issue.. I want to know wtf they're smoking Cloth costumes? Ooooohhhhkayyy.... But I'm mostly confused at the catgirl waitress from.. Ok, I can't just say she's from outer space because that's probably a given, but still, WTF? Saying that's "out of left field" is completely insufficient to describe that. That's like someone in a baseball game making the call, "And it looks like Elway is going with the 9-iron for this penalty kick."

It wouldn't be Bandai if they didn't manage to take (at least) a step backwards for every one forwards.

Hah, that's what I get for not digging into the external sources and side story material more often. The details about the exotic matter, and gravitational manipulation -do- make some sense from a technology standpoint, so I can appreciate that. I've never read into the explanations of how it was related to all of the gravity-manipulation tech they've had since the SDF-1, but it does connect the dots pretty well. I remembered the sound boosters from 7 being related to amplifying and broadcasting it, but didn't remember it was just adapted fold booster tech.

Not wrong at all, it's been a progression of one-upping itself as a plot-device. I think I just forgot how much it was already in use. I think from a technical standpoint, fold waves made the most sense in Frontier (at the start), because they were treated as a sort of waveform somewhere in the EM spectrum. Vajra happened to communicate on that wavelength, and Ranka and Sheryl's conditions allowed them to "speak" on that wavelength in a way that confused the Vajra, because it was like hearing garbled and confused telepathic messages transmitted by someone who didn't speak your language (none of them knew how to think in Russian, clearly). Blasting out music carrying that waveform effectively worked as noise jamming against Vajra communications. In the end, it felt like it was turning spiritia from Macross 7 into an almost scientific concept. I am, however, going to ignore the fact that if it's carried by live song, there's no reason a mic should pic it up, or speakers should amplify it, because they aren't designed to carry that wavelength. They kind of danced around that point by just using the raw crystals as transmitters. Now though.. between the Frontier movies and Delta, it's just approaching technobabble capabilities that would make the Enterprise-D's deflector dish jealous. It's not just an energy form, it's also generated by raw emotion, and directly infusing that as a transmitted signal into your engines suddenly makes them more powerful, and routing it through the right headphones gives you extreme g-tolerance and spidey senses. We've honestly reached peak Orky levels of tek here. They turned an electromagnetic waveform into a way to convert emotions into an energy beam that grants people and machines superpowers. Just imagine rewiring your car stereo directly into the engine, and getting a NOX-like boost effect from blasting power metal through the cylinders.

Ok... I have no idea what I'm even looking at anymore.. Still good for a monster (or two, depending on price), but I have no idea what they're doing at this point. Are they making Ranka dolls to pair with the valk?

I'm guessing it's because Alto's the only one they've made any copies of with the new molds yet. Hey, who knows.. they might actually mold Ozma's in all the right colors this time. Also, it's really strange to say, but I wish they would base Michael's scheme off of the V.1 DX instead of the canon series.. I never understood why his was such an oddball. The first DX had the entire lower half of the nose painted white.. but the canon scheme is just the gear doors? It looks so much better being all painted together.