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Chronocidal

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  1. Chronocidal
    Those parts are the lower halves of the noses, with the gear wells cut out. I guess it's kind of cool to have cockpits like this, but I can't help thinking this is just.. dumb? If I wanted a cockpit display, I'd want something the size of the cockpit, and with a seated figure. If I wanted that much of the nose, I'd just rather have the whole aircraft at that point. I dunno, it just feels like a really bizarre display base that completely overpowers the figure you're displaying with it, while being simultaneously disappointing because if you're making something this size, why not just go all the way and make the whole plane?
  2. Chronocidal
    I might skip the Hayate and just shoot for a Mirage later. Agreed about the clunky pod though. I'm actually thinking I would just swap parts around and replace it with one of the stock VF-31 pods from the other releases (will give me something to do with the one removed from Arad's to install the armor pack). Doesn't look like the design has changed enough to prevent that.
  3. Chronocidal
    What if I want to just stick with Nether Gundam? Give it a chance, it'll blow everything else away.
  4. Chronocidal
    Same here, my second is with them, and they seem to have beat Big in Japan to the punch on the shipping. Mine arrived in Cincinnati earlier this morning. Estimate says by the 27th, but if past DHL is any indicator, I'm guessing I might see it by Friday, if not sooner. EMS for my first copy hasn't left Japan yet, that I can see.
  5. Chronocidal
    Something just occurred to me, and I wonder if anyone would be bold enough to try it. Setting aside the chest intake issue (which MP-3 had solved and I think everyone should go back to that method), the biggest streamlining issue seems to be that Starscream's legs taper in the opposite direction of the F-15's fuselage. They tried to compromise on MP-3, and the legs just wound up very narrow on the bottom. MP-11 reversed this, and made the legs fatter, and no one has tried to streamline them that way again. Wacky idea. What if the entire lower leg opened up, and the shin flipped around? It would probably play havoc with the leg and foot joints, but doing this would put the widest point of the leg where most Starscreams put the knees, and potentially let you hide the feet in the mid-body, instead of dangling under the engines. I'm thinking it would mess a little with the robot details in alt mode, but I don't actually know if anyone would care if the leg details were backwards on the underside of the jet. So long as they wind up in the right place on the bot, it probably would get a pass. Might have to see if I can't make a quick CAD model of this later as a test, see how the proportions work out, and whether there would be room for all the necessary parts.
  6. Chronocidal
    Honestly, that alien thing looks much more like some future variant of the VF-14.. like almost exactly. Not sure if that 262 is supposed to be red though, it just looks like it's lit by a sunset. Might pick up a red one.. but where's the freakin' Ba already? I don't even care if it has the pope head or not, since I like the anubis more, but I want the actual delta wings already.
  7. Chronocidal
    Heads up for anyone waiting on an order at Okini Land, I found their shipping payment request in my junk folder. Not too bad, $45 for DHL. That really is pretty dumb for the fanracer though. Will definitely need to come up with a custom figure for it, and maybe cut out the doors and make some plug in landing gear inserts for it. Glad I ordered a spare, so I'll have one to experiment with.
  8. Chronocidal
    It's an improvement all around, but wow that's a ton of joints in the tails. I guess that's just the go-to method now. As silly as the sandwich wing design on MP-52 looks, I actually think they fairly well nailed the tail section transformation. Reminds me a bit of the Iron Factory (I think) transformation, that twisted and folded the tails and stabilizers around so they laid flat against the backs of the wings. The more I see of the complex mechanisms these are using, the more I wonder how accurate they could get both modes if they just went all out, and made the whole jet turn completely inside-out to transform, hiding and collapsing the entire robot inside the fuselage, and then expanding the boxy structures to bulk out the robot.
  9. Chronocidal
    I don't think anyone's actually going to be able to ship you one for much less than $50 at this point, shipping is still a pile of nonsense. I had a $15 upcharge on my original EMS order, which I don't honestly think is that bad.
  10. Chronocidal
    Still sad we don't get a seated Minmay, but I'm looking forward to this anyhow. Just got a request for a slight upcharge for EMS shipping from Big in Japan, so looks like they're either getting their stock shortly, or have it in hand. Woo! Edit: They don't waste any time shipping, they must have been at the post office when they forwarded the shipping upcharge. I've already got a tracking number.
  11. Chronocidal
    I'd honestly be entirely down for them just reissuing the classic 90s molds again. Their ships may not have been exceedingly accurate, but holy cow are they fantastic toys. I picked up a pile of them at garage sale prices last year, and have them proudly displayed alongside my Diamond Select ones. Oh for the long lost days of toys with more than one sound effect button. Seriously.. being able to just play a specific sound when you want it is just a wonderful thing. I wouldn't mind seeing Diamond Select pick their production back up though.. still want a proper D7/K'tinga to display, and they never did release their Enterprise-C mold.
  12. Chronocidal
    Curse of the 4-stud diameter strikes again.. those launchers look like toothpicks. Maybe not too far off, but why can't they just develop a few more sizes of round elements to use? They keep making these big sets, and never bothering to make the parts necessary to really nail the shapes.
  13. Chronocidal
    I've ordered at least two of their F-14 releases directly from the website, due to issues getting supply at some local shops. Had no problems to speak of.
  14. Chronocidal
    Some of the details do look larger, but what constantly sticks in my mind is the deck lighting. The windows of the Discoprise's various sections seem to line up almost completely with classic deck diagrams of the TOS Enterprise. The neck is shorter, and the bridge levels are mixed up, but the levels of lighting on the secondary hull almost look like a deck-for-deck copy. Doesn't mean the ship wouldn't be longer or shorter, but the vertical scale of the hull and shuttlebay looks very similar. Really, I'd just like to see an official deck layout for the new ship. I love the visual update, and think it makes a great believable midpoint between the show Enterprise and the TMP refit (apart from the bridge design, just a personal nitpick), but I really miss the days when artists and designers reveled in creating diagrams for every last detail of a ship like this. From reading some of the design process, it sounds like they did go into a lot of those details, but I haven't really seen anything showing all of that work off. This article about the design is pretty interesting, and it talks a little about how they intended it to visually follow into the TOS design, before the VFX team who built the final CGI model made a few changes (mainly it seems they decided to give the nacelle pylons the TMP-style sweep). https://trekmovie.com/2019/03/24/how-the-uss-enterprise-was-redesigned-for-star-trek-discovery/
  15. Chronocidal
    Glad they're reissuing it for people who absolutely can't live without it, but no thanks, I'll buy my own LEDs and motors. Sheeesh. This is a large portion of why I'm planning a TOS repaint of the Discoprize. Don't need no fancy decals if the ship is just solid gray.
  16. Chronocidal
    That last statement is definitely true, and I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that a lot of the Macross community favors the jet mode over the robots, so long as the robot is at least functional, even if it's not matching the aesthetics of the animation. Personally, I just like fascinating transformations and cool jets. I think a more apt comparison though would be to compare the TF community's attitude toward cars, trucks, etc, vs aircraft. That does not make any sense to me. I've watched people going back and forth arguing bits and bobs of car transformers for years, debating things like curved or straight exhaust pipes, shapes of tail lights, whether or not they mold the windshield wipers on, or put a gas cap in the right place.. absolutely miniscule details of real vehicles that they want to see accurately replicated. But bring in a jet, and suddenly they don't give a crap if it's carrying its mutated Siamese twin under its gut. The community seems almost as picky about car alt modes as Macross fans are about jet modes. What makes transforming jets different? Why do jets smuggling a robot under them get a pass when people flip out over Optimus Prime having the wrong chrome trim pattern in truck mode?
  17. Chronocidal
    Seriously an insane amount of money for such a tiny thing, I can't believe it costs more than the 1/1000 TOS/TMP kits. The bigger one (I'm calling closer to 1/600) costs a bit more, but downside to that is that it doesn't come with the hull decals, just a basic registry and marking sheet, and the "painting guide" is a photo on the box. It's a decent kit, but the prices for these are getting really excessive for what you get. The full kit to get the aztec markings and lighting set will set you back about $150 now.
  18. Chronocidal
    This is, I think, the point where thinking diverges wildly, for various reasons. From my personal perspective, I thought we already had this in MP-3/MP-11, and believe a mix of those designs that moved the hip skirts to the legs would have been pretty ideal. But that's because my standards for "good looking bot mode" are vastly different than what seems to be the status quo. I thought the bot mode was functional, posable, playable, and all the things that I would want a bot mode to be, because it achieved what I thought the MP line was after: realistic vehicles that transformed into robot characters. MP-3 looked enough like I remembered the old G1 robot that I was satisfied, and it was a huge upgrade from my old G2 Ramjet, which was essentially my only comparison. Fans of the character Starscream, and how he looks in the cartoons, didn't like a lot of things that never even occurred to me, and would never have bothered me at all if they weren't directly pointed out. Frankly, most of them still don't bother me. I feel like what I'm looking at is a sliding scale of accuracy to both the jet and robot. Theoretically we could have both, but realistically speaking, I think a fair target is for the jet and robot to be equally compromised, each sharing in the burden of making the figure physically possible. Overall? I think MP-3 was weighted more toward the jet. I didn't mind that, but I think MP-11 was a better balance, and while the underside lost that smooth profile, the changes to the legs did look better on the robot. With careful tweaking, I think it would probably be possible to resolve some of the other niggling issues with the robot, like the head being too high. MP-52 threw that scale fully to the bot side, and said "We don't care how ugly the jet is, we're making a figure that looks like the cartoon, because we know most of you don't give two shakes about the jet." Unfortunately for the F-15 enthusiasts among us, they actually weren't really wrong about that. Maybe someday they'll pull some magic out of their hat, and make those little changes that would have given the MP-11 the better robot without having to sacrifice some of the innovations that gave it such a good jet (the rotating chest intakes especially). We'll have to wait and see.
  19. Chronocidal

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    Cost wise... a 31A and armor bundle might still be cheaper than a naked 31A at this point.
  20. Chronocidal
    I'm... not sure I care at this point. Still got the ugly jagged back end mount over the pod, and now that giant stinger, and those new wing/tail hinges look like a sloppy pile of yuck. I don't think the giant sawtooth cuts help the wing design. Think I'm just burned out on Delta at this point. Maybe I'll wait and see, and pick up one or two if the demand doesn't go crazy. Actually.. I think I might just be bored with the base 31 design. It's not the most creative, the arms always feel whimpy, and the landing gear look like a quarter-baked idea. I love the 31A, and the basic design is nice enough, but this doesn't feel like much of an upgrade to me.
  21. Chronocidal
    Yeah, I'm thinking Bandai just doesn't give two shakes whether they match the small details.
  22. Chronocidal
    I think the fuselage may be a little thick for the size, but that doesn't surprise me much, since they had to cram so many mechanisms into it. The most telling thing for me about this Starscream is that every review, and every comment on those reviews I see is heaping almost unanimous praise on it for being "so much cleaner" and "a perfect representation," "better in every way than MP-3/MP-11." That's pretty much just proves two things to me.. First, Hastak knows what their audience wants, and second, I'm clearly not part of that audience. Oh well, maybe that just means now is a good time to go hunt down a secondhand MP-3.
  23. Chronocidal
    I don't know why this popped up in my recommended vids on youtube, but I want this in an official dub now.
  24. Chronocidal
    I'm still in that spot where I want the arms longer and beefier on the 21.. there is just so much room at the back end, and they could easily extend them, and thicken them up so they don't look so whimpy.. and stretch the wings further back too for that matter, since they don't even interact with anything else.
  25. Chronocidal
    Yeah, the armor packs are.. just crazy. The colors make no sense though, especially considering the ones they used on the printed movie cover..
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