Radd

Did he? I recall in one thread he said that the VF-4 was among the products he recommended they make, but that it wasn't on the top of the list. I don't remember him saying that it was something Yamato mentioned being on their to-do list. I certainly hope they make it. If they put out a 1/60 VF-4 I'd certainly buy three of the initial release (to display in all three modes), and one of every subsequent repaint. I might even buy four of the initial release, so I have one to abuse. I don't know if I'd be able to set the thing down for a week at least.

I would say it's a bit muddled. Maybe stick with two options, broken or not, and let people clarify in their posts. As for myself, I've two. Alto's and Ozma's. Neither are broken. The Ozma toy does have bent head lasers, and I agree with Pete that this is an issue. There's also the issue with the easily scuffed paint. I'm certainly noticing that. Beyond that, well I have opinions about the toy itself, but they're neither here nor there. Whether or not your toy is broken, and whether or not you agree with the direction Bandai took the DX line in, are really enough for separate threads. The DX is what it is. Mine, at least, do what they do well, besides the aforementioned issues with the head lasers and paint.

I think it's a little bit of both. The neck really is too short, but not that short. The neck extensions I've seen in this thread seem to overcompensate, making the neck too long. The head is a bit too squat, too. Also, I've yet to find a way to consistently get the neck to it's full length. It seems to take a lot of prodding to get it into a decent spot, and there seems to be no locking mechanism of any sort. It's just kinda sitting in there.

Also, what's with the voice acting? That was pretty terrible. I hope that's just because this is test footage, and not indicative of the voice work we can expect of the actual movie.

I pretty much agree with Renato on the character designs and choice of setting. It's very odd that they went with character designs that would look more at home in Advent Children, paired up with the classic Mitsuteru Yokoyama robot designs, and even villain costumes from what I could see. The whole production would have that much more visual oomph if they had worked with character designs more reminiscent of the originals. I also can't help but feel we've been kinda spoiled by Yasuhiro Imagawa's take on Mitsuteru Yokoyama's works. The man's a fantastic director, and Giant Robo showed you can really update the old style designs and make them work for a modern production while keeping that oldschool feeling to them.

Wii Sports, which comes with the system, is incredibly good. The system is excellent for party games: Excite Truck Mario Kart Smash Bros. Raving Rabbids 1 and 2 Wii Play (which comes with a Wii Remote) Wario Ware For more traditional games: Mario Galaxies Metroid Prime 3 No More Heroes (No More Heroes 2 has already been announced!) Twilight Princess Metal Slug Anthology There's also a great selection of Wii Ware and Virtual Console games.

I'd buy at least three. Maybe four. The VF-4 is hands down my favourite VF design. I absolutely adore both fighter mode and battroid mode, in much the same way Shin Densetsu Kai describes. Fighter mode looks sleek and fast, whereas battroid mode looks brutish and powerful. I don't subscribe to the idea that battroid modes must always look dainty elegant unless they're in GBP style armour.

Ok, I've had mine for some time now, both the Alto and Ozma toys. I don't know if anyone else has corrected my previous statements yet, but I did discover that if you use the gun pod holding hand and the closed fist hand you can, indeed, leave the same hands in for battroid and fighter mode. The fit isn't perfect, but once you get the shield on over the hands and into place it looks fine. This made me very happy.

Having the option to swap interchangeable hands isn't the issue. It's that you have to swap them out to transform. There's no option to leave in the hand that can hold the gun pod, and the hands you have to use for fighter mode aren't useful at all for battroid mode. Attaching Hikaru's damaged cockpit to the arm of Roy's VF-1S is not part of the transformation, it's a cute extra and a nod to one episode from the tv series. It's not the same sort of thing at all. However, I do agree that the gun pod issue alone doesn't disqualify the DX as being perfect transformation. You couldn't even stow the gun pod in the Takatoku VF-1. Still, it's odd that they didn't work the gun pod attachment into the toy rather than a separate piece. Except, you do have to swap out the hands. Granted, it's not the same as the 1/100 toys which have you swapping out many pieces. It's more on the level of being required to swap out the heat shield/cockpit canopy from Yamato's first VF-1 toys. Between the hands and the gun pod there are multiple pieces you have to take off and keep track of between transformations. Is that deal breaker? Probably not for most. Still, the DX toys have a lot of little issues for people to weigh.

The gun pod piece doesn't bother me so much as the need to swap the hands out.

I can't quite recall which of my Yamato toys it was, but one of them took a 5 foot dive from the top shelf on the back of my computer desk. Nothing broke. Of course, my apartment at the time had carpeting. Though I'm fairly certain it hit the desk on its way down. I think it was probably one of my 1/48ths, or my Konig Monster. Was a long time ago. I've never really thought of the Yamato toys as being particularly fragile, aside from the occaissional little antennae or head laser.

So THAT's what that little piece is for. Guess I stand corrected. Not used to needing a separate piece to stow the gun pod away.

Alright, having had a day now to play around with them, transform them, and all that...there's some really dumb design flaws with these things. You have to remove the hands to transform them. Leaving in a hand that can hold the gun pod is not an option. The shield will not fit over them. Actually, if BanDai hadn't decided to mold the shield so that it slipped over the hands, you would be able to leave just any of the hands in there. But, no, you are required to switch to a pair of hands, the sole purpose of which is to be hidden underneath the shield cover. Said hands don't look good in battroid mode for anything beyond dance poses, which I've yet to try and get the figure into. There is no way to stow the gun pod in fighter mode. Well, that's not entirely true. You can let it hang from the gap between the arms, but it won't stay. The moment you so much as think about it too hard, it falls out. It's clearly not designed to be displayed like that, and will not stay should you pose the fighter on any sort of pose stand. ( I stand corrected, you need to use a separate piece to stow the gun pod in fighter mode. That will teach me to toss the instruction booklet aside after working out the transformation.) Despite the fixed-pose hands, the gun pod still tends to droop. Most of the rest has already been covered by everyone else. Ozma's head lasers, the scale issue, the landing gear...the landing gear doesn't actually bother me so much. I saw an early photo of the landing gear that made them look like poorly molded plastic, and while clearly too short, they do their job and aren't as cheap looking as the photo I saw. As for appearances, well everyone has seen the photos by now. These toys are certainly not meant to be the high-detail collectors items that Yamato makes. The molding isn't quite as sharp, and there are relatively few details. I am glad they went with tampo printing for what details there are, still waiting for Yamato to climb on board that particular bandwagon. The toys compare favourably to the Takatoku/Bandai 1/55 toys, and BanDai's Macross 7 toys, but set them near any of Yamato's Macross toys and the difference in visual quality is pretty clear. Now, they do have that nice die-cast heft to them, to which I would attribute much the "sturdier" feeling the toys have to them, the rest of which is the fact that there's few little tabs or spikes or antennae poking out of these to be broken. There's the head lasers...and those bother me every bit as much on these as on other Macross toys. I have found that the landing gear doors do not always want to close properly, either. There are also a couple pieces that may come off, but easily snap back into place. I would say that the plastic feels more solid as well. I'm no expert on that, but I get the impression that I can be a little less careful when transforming the toy, though there are a couple pegs (such as those connecting the wing roots to the legs) that I could see posing problems if you're not careful. The transformation is pretty simple and intuitive, and the toy seems to use sturdy parts where necessary. I really don't get the impression that a sacrifice of looks was necessary for improved sturdiness. The sturdiness mainly comes from good use of die-cast joints and sturdy plastic, and of course the psychological effect of that die-cast heft. I would say fighter mode is the best mode on these toys, gerwalk being the weakest. Though, you can get a decent "A" stance out of them, by disconnecting the intakes from the main body. Unfortunately, the knees will not bend far enough forward to get really good poses out of it, and the feet won't bend side to side enough for much stability. It's not a mode I'd leave these toys in for long. Of course, everyone is going to compare these to Yamato's toys, that's only natural. It's comparable in price to Yamato's version 2 VF-1 toys (with FAST packs), though I would say the actual toy is more comparable to Takara's Masterpiece Starscream/Skywarp/Thundercracker. Even those are more detailed in appearance and feature noticeably better tampo printing for the details, and cost about $40 less. I do think price is an issue with these toys. I'd certainly be far more forgiving of the flaws if the toys weren't priced comparable to something like the VF-1 version 2. If you're a big fan of the VF-25 design and really want to add it to your 1/60 toy collection, I'd recommend picking one up. It's the only game in town, as far as that goes. If you're into model kits, you might want to pass on this toy and just get the model kits. If you've been burned by Yamato in the past, you might be pretty satisfied with this toy. It has design issues, but I doubt Bandai will have the kind of QC issues Yamato is known for. I'm still on the fence about whether or not I want to pick up Mikhail's or Luca's, I do like the designs, and there really won't ever be much in the way of options. The toys aren't bad, just overpriced for what they are. I'm kinda hoping the movie will see alternate colour schemes, being the sort of person who preferred the more subdued colours of the DYRL Skull squadron over the more brightly coloured tv series Valkyries.

Got my DX Alto and Ozma today. Still playing with them, getting an idea of how much I like them. I'm not entirely certain I'm transforming them right. Is the neck-piece supposed to snap into place or anything? It just kinda sits there, wobbling around in the chest. Doesn't seem quite as poseable as I had expected. Bent head lasers on my Ozma. They're not bad. Comparable to Masterpiece Starscream. Less detailed, but more poseable. Kinda cheaper feeling in some ways, but they do have that heft of die-cast. I'm hoping I've got them mistransformed and that's why the neck won't snap into place. Still on the fence about whether or not I'll get Mikhail's and Luca's. Like I said, they're not bad, but they're a bit pricey for what they are. Of course, the economy being what it is is almost certainly part of that issue. Still, I've only had them for a few hours so far. These are just my initial impressions.

Not that one, I think Graham posted a top view pic of the two toys side by side. *edit* Woops, too late.

At this point, I seriously doubt they will. Would be nice, sure, but extremely unlikely.

I agree wholeheartedly. Hopefully we'll see some of that competition in action with increasingly better QC from Yamato, and increasingly better sculpts from Bandai. Though, to be quite honest, I've never had a serious QC issue with a Yamato toy. Knock on wood. Some tighter joints would be a huge plus, though. And yeah, unfortunately I see them milking repaints on the VF-1 1/60 version 2 line for the foreseeable future. I'd love to see more obscure Valkyries, especially the VF-4, but we just haven't seen much of that from them over the years. I'll certainly be collecting the destroids, though.

But what's that got to do with the price of eggs?

I imagine that once pics are out you won't need to ask.

Here is all you need to know about Evangelion.

I don't believe this is the case. There seems to be a decent number of people falling in the middle ground, but they're not the loudest bunch (the middle ground generally doesn't feel all that strongly one way or the other, the loudest people are always the people who have rather strong opinons). And when anyone does post a middle-ground opinion, there are those who fall on the extremes who will jump on posts like that, making them out to be the opposite extreme.

Someone else already mentioned it, but often "special editions" like this are test runs. It is entirely possible that Oshii is working on a movie that will use a lot of the programs and/or techniques they used for the redone footage here.

Toys like this tend to cost more in Japan from what I've seen. Look at the Masterpiece Transformers releases. Japanese releases are comparable in price to this, where the American release will see them hitting the shelves at about 40 bucks less. Also, the DX VF-25 is cheaper than the 1/60 VF-1 version 2, if only by a little, despite being larger and having both die-cast parts and a more complex transformation (I would assume). Sorry about that, I wasn't directing that comment at you, specifically. I've seen a lot of people making similar comments, to varying degrees.

I would say that there's merit to the "looks like a toy" comment, if one considers Yamato's toys to be "collectors items". There's a stark difference in accuracy, detail, and molding between what we've seen from Yamato, and the BanDai DX pieces. Add to that the likelihood of us seeing a Yamato version is about as likely as us ever seeing Macross 7 toys from Yamato and the disappointment seems reasonable. Also, I don't believe the idea that "this is BanDai's first attempt since the HCM so we should cut them some slack" is valid. BanDai isn't three guys working out of a garage, or even a small independent company with only a few releases under their belt. This is BanDai. They're big boys and don't need fans peddling excuses on web forums. The only reason the toy doesn't look every bit as good as what Yamato puts out is because BanDai wasn't aiming for that. The comment that BanDai is aiming this at a younger audience is more than likely right on the money. Being the only game in town for a 1/60 VF-25 toy, BanDai seems to have made this on a budget where they can sell it a bit cheaper, and have (hopefully) made it a bit sturdier, so that it will appeal to a broader market. "The 1/55th of the 21st century" is pretty apt. Rather than comparing it to Yamato's toys, I would probably compare the DX VF-25 to Takara's Masterpiece seekers. It seems to be about the same size and price point.

I know everyone is all googly-eyed for Street Fighter 4, but I have to say I'm more excited about this.