Chronocidal

Eh.. I can say I was a sucker for the emotional bits, but yeah, this felt.. I don't know. I guess I kind of enjoyed it, but only as long as I didn't try to think about any of it? You know what I think might actually make a decent story? Delete the Delta series, and rewrite it as two seasons, one based on each movie. The first movie felt better than the series for me because it deleted a lot of fluff, while streamlining some of the plot in a way that felt more sensible (but still iffy). This movie.. felt like it needed an entire series to explain anything that was going on. It ran at breakneck speed from point to point to point without any time to digest things. Imagine the Itano Circus, but in the form of a JJ Abrams-style plot blitzkrieg that throws so many things at you so rapidly you don't have any time to think about how none of it makes any sense. Music.. yeah, completely forgettable. I was absolutely intrigued by the concept they teased with the "evil Walkure" and would have loved to see something actually done with it.. but nope, no time for that. The villain was so out of left field, I actually thought they were pulling the name from the villains of Macross 30.. but nope, they just start with the same letter. Also, fold waves have morphed into pure 100% unfiltered plot gobbledegook. They do whatever you need, whenever you need, for whatever reason you can dream up. For the spoilers though.. But.. yeah. I think it was a fitting finale to Delta. More dropped threads than an epileptic cross-stitch circle, mass-produced pop music on repeat, and the best parts were all stolen from a better series.

Would definitely be nice, but it looks like there is absolutely no room in the leg for anything else. Also, that's the inside leg panel, not the missile bay. They may have made those removable to make room for the arms in fighter mode. Far as the feet are concerned though, yeah, Bandai has proven multiple times that it has no idea how the YF-19's feet should be shaped. The closest they got was with the VF-19 Advance, but the toes were still way too massive. I get that they like making the toes look nice and big in battroid, with a taller blocky heel, but it completely ruins the shape of the entire foot in fighter mode. That heel in particular is really off-model, and looks more like something off one of the newer Frontier/Delta valks, rather than the flatter thrust vectoring paddles the YF-19 had.

Judging by the product photos, they did upgrade the tampo on the Alto bundle, they've at least added the NO STEP markings on the wings, but will have to wait and see what else they might add. Would be nice if they added cockpit details.

I kind of hope it's just a single kit with multiple canopies, because I think that is literally the only difference between them, and I'd rather build the green one anyhow. Though I have to say one thing about the 171.. I give them credit for designing something that looks exactly the same on the screen as it does in-hand, in all modes. The fact that the dedicated fighter kit looks identical to the transforming one is such a crazy leap from how the first transforming valk toys were.

Can't say it doesn't look good for a model that size, but eh. Maybe eventually, if they keep putting out re-pops of the mold like they keep doing with the VF-25 kits. The giant hinges do kill it pretty hard on the wings and tails, a lot like happened with the 1/72 VF-1 they made. At least for this one it looks like they didn't try and completely redesign the transformation mechanisms.

I'm a -little- surprised, but I think it makes more sense than literally shafting everyone involved out of everything they purchased. Google doesn't need anymore ill-will of any kind right now. And let's face it, it probably wasn't successful enough in the first place for the refunds to even put a microscopic dent in their account. If they had made that much off it, they probably wouldn't be killing it.

Boy, I certainly hope they at least offer all of their paying customers a way to redeem the games they paid for outright on another service platform... because boy howdy, that's been the single most baffling aspect of Stadia from day one. Edit: Hadn't read the announcement yet, looks like everyone's being refunded for everything they ever bought, so at least that's working out. Everyone just gave Google an interest-free loan for the lifespan of the product.

YOUCH.. I mean, I expected the big ticket price, but the $500 shipping really kills it for me

I only noticed it because the lower wing glove paint on mine got some weird uneven coating that actually made it look weathered from the factory. They did this with several of the parts on Ozma's, because whoever designed the paintschemes for the Frontier valks apparently had no concept whatsoever of how difficult they would be to replicate on toys, or even models. Ozma's valk has like four shades of gray going on, if I recall. Unfortunately, nothing changed going into Delta.. Somewhere, the connection between "transforming toy" and "gobs of intricate pinstriping and multi-layered paintschemes" never set off any common sense alarms.

FedEx went faster than even they expected, mine got dropped off this morning on my doorstep. Probably won't watch until the weekend though, too much other stuff to do this week.

Just be glad they learned (some, at least) from the early v.1 DX VF-25 releases. Michael's valk had the entire lower half of each wing section and the entire gear doors molded in blue paint, and then painted over with white, because they didn't break out the molds correctly to allow them in separate colors. Sadly, the Renewals didn't even escape this entirely.. Michael's was fine, but for some mind-boggling reason, they molded the lower halves of Ozma's wing sections on a different mold than all of the other pieces molded in that color, and then painted over them... and the results were not great. If the wings weren't covered by the armor anyhow, they'd be rather ugly.

Honestly, I'm just happy they're actually doing bundles.. after.. oh, what's it been now, over ten years? Seriously. I paid for my first Alto DX renewal in July of 2011, and the packs were released something like a year later. Everyone wanted bundles from the start, but noooooo, gotta make everything web exclusive to let the scalpers milk the market for over a decade before kicking all the people who've been overpaying for all that time squarely in the cajones. I'm not personally salty about this, because I jumped through the hoops to get in on group buys for the super and armor packs for both Alto and Ozma, but to change course now just makes me want to slap them. Won't stop me from at least attempting to pick up both an Alto and Ozma bundle, of course. I just hope they follow through and at least do both Alto and Ozma so all the people who picked up later runs of Ozma can finally get an MSRP armor set for him.

This is the part that baffles me. There's been no limitation on them doubling up on the 1/72 kits to this point, which either means the licensing got screwy, or Bandai intentionally handicapped themselves into making a worse product... because let's face it, going to 1/100 is making one of the most complex valk transformations just that much more difficult. You can see from the parts photos that they've already crippled the painting process by molding half of the pilot into the cockpit. Even their 1/100 VF-25 and VF-29 non-transforming kits didn't go that far. It's bad enough painting a 1/100 pilot (and let's face it, this is Bandai, so it's actually more like 1/120, because they have no sense of scale for pilot figures), but now you have to paint the pilot's arms and lower torso already molded into the seat and consoles. Edit: Actually scratch the entire full transformation gimmick idea, you can see from the parts trees that it has to parts-swap the torso. They molded everything from the nose sensors inside the nosecone back to the full spine as a single piece. I guess I never really had that much hope, but no, they can't do a perfect transformation at this scale. I guess all they wanted to do was make a modern take on their old 3-mode Macross 7 kits.

I'm... torn. I wouldn't mind getting another pack set, as well as an excuse to get one in a matte finish. Hmmmmm.

Don't know why they felt the need to go 1/100.. and not match anything else they've made in the past ten years. Seriously, I've had easier times unscrambling gordian spaghetti code than trying to comprehend Bandai's thought processes. This does look like a completely modern mold though, judging by all the color breaks and what we can see of the assembly in that mold picture. I'm just really wondering if they're going to even try and do a perfect transformation, or just give up and parts swap the torso.

I'm still irritated that Bandai never made any transforming kits of these. Given the issues with the DX, I'm not really surprised they didn't.. who knows how they could have made that work.

Yeah, though I think that's something they never would have done on purpose in the original F-14A. That thrust differential is how you go two-for-two with shoving your RIO through the canopy.

Can't really call it hunting, this is just a crazy awesome coincidence. It's actually a classic MacrossWorld tradition for someone to acquire the early prototypes for a new valk toy. I'm happy to see that's still potentially possible with Bandai.

Quite possible, I never considered that they were numbers, it looked like someone making initials, or Japanese characters. I think it's fairly clear that D3 is the Figure King interview copy, but that display may be of two others.

I had to

Yeah, nothing to say for sure about the second one, but that first one is a dead ringer for all of the details you've pointed out. I would be really interested in finding out where the red-lettering on the flaps came from though. Odds are they fell out, and were swapped with another copy, but I don't remember anyone using red to begin with.

Yeah, I was thinking this will be much harder to prove. I'm wondering if those two had their parts swapped in and out over time, because the battroid display one has a white heat shield still, and the chest marking was on the fighter display with the fogged canopy. That stress mark does look like a good match though. Interesting about the molten plastic, I'm thinking more work with a soldering iron, just pressed flat into the back of them, probably like a brand to keep track of them.

Hah, it could, I actually just wondered if it might be someone's initials. It does look more like a "D", but I always wondered if it was the Hiragana for "Riro."

I love the concept of that one, but boy does it ever have some of the weirdest design decisions.. Always preferred the first "Fand" or whatever that was called, since it looked like some sort of advanced F-16 evolution. It would have been amazing if they just hadn't made the cockpit do this.

So, further proof, and I'm surprised you didn't see it. There's a weird scrawled gash in the upper left of the chest that looks like it was melted with a hot pen or something. It's less clear in the store display photos, but you can make out some weirdness that looks similar in that area of the fighter-mode display. I specifically remember that mark being called out when the early production photos were circulated, because people complained about it, and someone replied that it looked like a mark to specifically distinguish it as a pre-production article. I'm pretty sure you have this valk, right here, which was used in the early promo videos. The other details of that sample match up as well, including the nub of plastic at the top edge of the intakes. You can't see the missing paint or the frosted canopy, because they're covered up in that battroid display. Link to the original post in the announcement thread is here. Only thing that doesn't quite match up is the markings on the wing flaps, so I wonder if those were swapped out at some point.