MacrossJunkie

I tried GERWALK mode for the first time. I now know what the fuss is about GERWALK mode for this thing. You can angle the legs so far forward, but the feet can't angle back enough to compensate. Had to bring the legs back a notch, but it just makes it look so front heavy. It's not too bad I guess since it still manages to stand up at least. The other modes are still more fun though.

Mine are the same way. The ankles are loose when bent forward but get tighter when angling them back. You're a brave person to attempt taking that thing apart if you think there's a 90% chance of breaking it

Nice, that heat shield cover doesn't look half bad on the 22. I hadn't seen the completed one until now.

Or so right, depending on your point of view

I think he meant in fighter mode, the profile is thinner than that of the VF-25, which is true. Battroid wise, it looks chunkier because the legs are still too high up and doesn't have enough clearance, especially when the crotch piece is angled outwards. It makes the hips seem even closer to the chest. The shoulders could use the renewal style joints as well.

I think it would have looked a lot better without those extra stabilizers or whatever you call them sticking out of the pods at the end of the wings and without the large shield attachment..

Design-wise, fighter and GERWALK mode are fine. They just need to modify battroid with the renewal 25's crotch locking mechanism along with the lock on the outward slant. Maybe also the hands where a larger ball joint is in the hands, instead of the little ball on a peg coming from the wrist, which would allow for holding the large beam gunpod with one hand without going limp wristed.

I think the renewal VF-25's ankles are well designed as well. It seems to have a wide range of motion and is pretty stiff as well which isn't the case with the VF-19's.

After getting the VF-19, I think they ought to eventually redo the YF-19 as well. The YF-19 just seems so off in comparison. One of the things that bothered me about it from the start as far as the battroid mode is concerned is that the profile of the battroid seemed like it was leaning forward in a neutral stance and the knees seemed bent backwards. I won't even get started on the fighter mode from anything other than top angle viewing.

Nope, those numbers are the ones for Docker's VF-19S. if you take a close look at the stickers of the VF-19 on the sticker sheet, you can see the "101" on them. the master file just shows extra markings like the "01" on the other side of the shoulders and other markings. Background was just cleaned up of stray dust, but not photoshopped in. Just used a black backdrop. The clear stand would have made it hard to photoshop in a background.

Thanks guys. I used the VF-19 master file book as my guide for the sticker placement.

I hope Yamato's D variant head doesn't look anything like that Experten model's a few pages back. That one looks kinda derpy. Hope some pics start showing soon.

Such a nice color. Wasn't a big fan of the design in the animation, but the toy actually makes it look great. The battroid mode has become one of my favorites with the proportions and awesome head sculpt. It's too bad the transformation locking on the nosecone in conjunction with the glossiness makes putting a clear coat and weathering on the toy unfeasible or impractical.

Mine has the trailing edge dipping below the tail fins about 1mm where it ought to be level with the horizontal part of the tail piece.

Got mine yesterday and got to mess around with it today. This actually feels like one of the easiest to transform toys next to the 1/48 VF-1. I have already transformed it back and forth several times and have been impressed with how well the pieces all fit together and how I don't need to struggle to get certain pieces in place in exactly the right way like I would have to with the VF-22/YF-21 or even the VF-11. I was going to put a flat coat on mine, but after seeing how this transforms, I decided it would be an ill-advised and futile effort. The way the nose cone locks in battroid mode would mean scraping the clear coat off every time I try to transform it. Oh well, not a big deal, but I just don't like how the glossy surface easily shows the out-of-the-factory scratches and is a finger print magnet. Another minor gripe that probably only I care about is that the panel lines are too shallow. So shallow that even paint mixed with thinner is useless. I had to use *gag* gundam markers for the job Strangely, they didn't include any sticker placement guide, but that was no big deal. It looks like they took the markings right out of the master file book. Even the side, top and bottom view of the fighter on the sticker sheet was copied directly from it. So I just used the marking diagrams on pages 90 and 91 from the VF-19 Master File book as my guide. Again, only relevant to the 5 or 6 people in the world that bother to put the stickers on Overall, I was surprised just how well this thing was engineered, especially compared to the YF-19. The gaps are minimal and the tolerances seem pretty tight. I love that it uses a lot of die cast in it. Bandai needs to take some lessons from Yamato regarding color matching. The die cast spine area seems to have the blue paint matched nearly perfectly to the blue plastic. The battroid mode seems to be very poseable as well. Not having the Kai already, I was pleasantly surprised to see the range of movement available in the legs which the YF-19 was utter fail at without looking awkward. I'm looking forward to the VF-17 even more if this is the level of design I can expect.

I only really like the 1/60's because they are in scale with the rest of the valkyries and also took up less space and generally had tighter joints. Plus, that scale had the two seaters where the 1/48's didn't. My beefs with the 1/60's are as other people have mentioned. That stupid ugly hook thing that leaves a hole in the tail and seems to put a lot of stress on the backpack joint. The extra piece needed to attach to the boosters. It doesn't look right and also scrapes against the top surface of the fighter... especially annoying if you have a clear coat on them. Lack of surface details compared to the 1/48. However, I didn't really care so much about the loss of gimmicks.

I hope there is an actual locking mechanism for the chest to keep it from sliding and pointing so far down like this while handling it. I love the final texture of the toy. Looks great in fighter mode at the very least and the profile still seems fairly thin in Renato's video.

I would be surprised if they got the colors that badly matched in the final release product considering that they got the version 1 Ozma's colors matched up pretty good. The completely different color for the knee joint makes me think that is still a test version. With all the care and consideration they've put into the renewal version, it would seem completely asinine and just downright brain dead for them to just pick some random color for the knee joint in the final product. What bothers me more right now are those horrendous poses they manage to display them in... I'm kidding

I'm not sure why the gap doesn't really bother me. I think I just assume in my mind there would naturally be one there due to the difference in shape. The gap in the 1/60 YF-19 seems pretty minimal to me, actually. It also has a little wall a little further in that sort of covers the gap so the hole doesn't reach further in. Does the 19 Kai have that? On a completely unrelated note, sometimes when I look at the VF-19S in the pics, the bright yellow stripes make me think "hey, it's a tron valk!" Just the way the bright thin squiggly lines look against the darker colors in battroid mode brings that to mind. I guess I'm just weird

For me, despite generally liking the fighter mode for valks a bit more than battroid, it was the battroid mode that sold it for me. The fighter mode looks alright to me, but it's a bit thick compared to the VF-25 and 27. The overall design of the battroid mode just looks pretty cool to me. That said, I keep mine in fighter mode because the joints seemed to get loose quickly when kept in battroid mode for some reason. The same with the VF-25G and S I have. The 25G just got completely floppy after I got it and kept it posed in battroid mode for a month or so. The 25S, I had kept in fighter mode after I got it, but then decided to take it back to battroid and noticed it was still very tight. After a month of having it posed in battroid, it turned to flop when I tried reposing it. That may be the main disappointing factor of the Bandai valks. My Yamato valks still retain whatever tightness they had since the day I got them, regardless of what mode I leave them in for a long time.

There is something that has been on my mind regarding the Frontier valks and was reminded of when looking at Jenius' review. Does anyone else feel that the cockpits and canopies for the VF-25 and later designs seem to be comparatively smaller than those of pre-Frontier valks? Back when the v1 VF-25s came out, even though the valks themselves were in scale, they just didn't look like that was the case due to the canopy size, not even taking into account the pilot figures. With the YF-29 and VF-25 renewals, the canopies have lengthened a tiny bit, but the width is about the same and still look much smaller than those of previous generation valks. It makes them feel like they are a smaller scale to me. The VF-27's seems like an even worse offender with the canopy being even more shallow and narrow. There doesn't seem to be room to make the pilot figures any bigger because it would require the cockpits to be bigger. The arms of the pilot figures are already touching the sides of the cockpit. That made me wonder if the cockpits on the Yamato valks were too big. Now, we know some of the pilots figures that Yamato made are on the large side *cough*YF-19 Isamu*cough*, but the cockpit sizes look about right. They look properly scaled to the rest of the valk, so I can only conclude that Frontier-era valks were just designed with teeny tiny cockpits. Even the SV-51 cockpit and canopy which seems slimmer and more cramped compared to other pre-Frontier valks still seems cavernous compared to the VF-25 and up. Not really a complaint, just something that crossed my mind and made me think why the pilots are so much smaller even on the renewals despite them filling the cockpits with hardly any wasted space.

So you're saying it's on the bleeding edge of toy design?

I would be ecstatic with the news of a DX Battle Frontier, Battle Galaxy, or a VF-171EX. An announcement of any of those three would really make my day.

Nice. So then, Jasonc might actually have a shot at selling his for close to $500

I have to say their customer support has been very good and they have really improved the speed of their shipping over the years. Back 7 or 8 years ago, it often took a week or two just to ship out an in stock item. Now they ship stuff out the next business day and with FedEx or EMS, I've gotten things from them in 3 days as well, going from Japan to the east coast. As for customer support, my stickers for the GBP-1S were faulty and I emailed them and followed up with a picture of the sticker sheet. They saw that it was indeed defective and in only a few days, I got an email saying that a replacement sticker sheet was being shipped via EMS. That's some good customer service.