MacrossJunkie

The main things I didn't like about the old Yamato version that I hope are or should be improved in the new release are: The large gap between the head and legs in fighter mode. The many noticeable gaps between various pieces. Panel lines are very large like the rest of Yamato's releases prior to the destroids and VF-1 v2. Although Arcadia went completely the other direction and made the panel lines very fine but also very shallow to the point that they are hard to see, much less panel line them. Bandai's is just about perfect, imo. They were fine, yet visible and deep enough to do panel lining easily. The wings needed better support. The VF can't even be turned upside down without the wings flopping. Ankle articulation was pretty much non-existent. The included stickers were the thick multi-layered kind like those that were included with the 1/48 VF-1, YF-19 and 21 and all MZero releases that constantly had the edges peeling/curling. The rear stabilizers only rotated around and stuck out at an angle from the arms in battroid mode when they should be flat against the arms.

Going by how color accurate they have been with the Zero releases so far, Arcadia will probably go with dark pink/purple like in the screenshot in Zx31's post above.

I pulled this from Hobby Search. There just aren't that many markings for the armor itself.

NY finally shipped mine. Just noticed they sent an email about it being shipped. I assume everyone else still waiting got a shipping notification too?

That's from the Macross Design Works book in the beginning section where a lot of preliminary designs, some not macross related are shown. These were originally for I forget the name, Aerial Cavalry Knights? Which eventually became escaflowne and all the designs were dropped but later repurposed in Macross.

I wonder if anyone here who ordered from NY has had theirs shipped yet of if they are just sitting on their arses. It's getting close to a week of preparation in progress.

Nice work, Lolicon! You get better results than I do with the Tamiya weathering kits. Did you use the included stickers or the waterslides from the hasegawa kits? And the panel lines are so shallow that without some panel lining work done, it looks like it has no detail either, even if you squint hard to find the panel lines.

Regarding the Detolf mounts, the mount seems durably designed so there shouldn't be any issues as far as breakage is concerned. As for the glass, if you're putting it in a Detolf, there's not enough room in the Detolf to need to worry about mounting enough valks to stress the tempered glass. If talking about something like mine, where the glass shelf is much longer, but also thicker, I would say that even 4 valks both on top and bottom wouldn't cause any breakage. I put the numbers through a calculator and a piece of tempered glass the size of one of my shelves (47" wide, 14" long, 3/8" thick) with the supports about 4 feet apart can hold a max distributed load of up to 146 lbs. Now of course we're talking about loading the weight of a bunch of valks onto a much smaller area, but I can't see it being anywhere near an issue as the valk toys on average aren't terribly heavy to begin with anyway.

I would say not at all, unless we're talking about a complete hatchet job on the armor or the Yamato VF-0. Without even speaking of the attachment points, the proportions are too different. For example, the chest is much wider on the Yamato version so you'd have to hack off chunks of the chest on the sides just to get the chest armor to cover it.

It's frustrating how slow they've gotten lately. Mine's also been "Preparation in progress" stage for days. They need to work on their logistics or something. Do they only have one person packing and shipping things out?

Thank you, Mr Bomber! And finally the battroid mode pics to finish off the set.

For those curious, here is a comparison vs a normal cotton swab and a 31J. I got the small size. I saw extra small and medium sizes as well. Came as a 50 pack which were then sealed in two separate baggies of 25 to... I don't know... preserve freshness?

Me too. I love new designs and transformation schemes. In that department, Frontier was sort of lacking. While I love the 25, 27 and 29, they had the same transformation with a few minor differences and the 171 was a revised 17D. Also, having a variety in the collection makes for a more interesting display.

Does that behemoth transform too or is it robot only?

And it would only cost $150 more!

Thank you for mentioning the Tamiya swabs! I didn't know they existed. I ordered a pack and got them the other day. Boy they are small, but I think they will be much easier to use than normal cotton swabs due to the fine points. I've yet to give them a try, but I will give them a go with my other 31J.

Yeah, you might damage the tampo printing. Bandai's tampo is not exactly the most durable, especially combined with the slick plastic they had been using until starting with the YF-30. Speaking of which, if you use the toothpaste to scour the surface, you'll likely notice that the surface will end up looking less reflective than the parts you didn't scour due to all the micro-abrasions. It wouldn't be noticeable on textured plastic, but on the smooth glossy plastic of the renewals, I'm certain it would be.

Are you certain that it wasn't painted that way from the start? Bandai often doesn't color match very well between the plastic and painted parts. Out of the box, for both my original release and re-issue versions, the white of the head lasers were more of an off-white that didn't match the white of the valk. Under my lighting, the painted parts look fine though. I don't know if there's some variance in the color between batches or if the paint on yours really did change color. It seems kind of strange if it was the paint that changed color before the plastic, though, when it wasn't really exposed to anything.

Yeah, the plastic parts still look pristine white. The painted sections look less white.

Took some more fighter mode pics of the 27. Will do battroid later.

LOL, and you were afraid to put up your display? Your entire setup is amazing! I love it!

Nice, BV. Makes me want to work on more composited pics. My total count is a big whopping one just because it was so time intensive to do.

I hope the missiles are individual pieces that are removable. I may need to paint them with an actual white. The pink of the missiles is going to annoy me greatly.

This is not a competition! Everyone should share whether they have 1 or 100.

This is what I got. Frameless Wallcase Full Vision The low price helped to offset the $200 shipping. It was shipped on a pallet through a freight service and was 400 lbs. I had been looking for a good case for years at a decent price and that was the place with the lowest price for a case like that that I could find.