Actar

Well, I'm out of options... favorite valk, too...

Of all the times for this to happen... The bizarre thing is that it was stuck like that for me on multiple browsers.

WHY?

Are they opening it by region?

Huh? Still says On Sale Soon for me?

Well, completely got the time wrong by an hour... Missed HLJ and AJP, and I don't like paying for preorders so early in advance. AmiAmi's my only hope...

By "canopy," does it mean the actual canopy (with heat shield?) or the reclined pilot seat? If it's the actual canopy, does it mean that the pilot seat can just collapse backward like the Yamato?

Going to preorder 2 right off the bat! I could not be more hyped. Really, really hope to be able to secure those preorders...

It looks like it isn't transformed properly in this latest stock(?) image. From previous photos, we see the intakes can be lowered some more and the torso hasn't been pegged together at all.

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I just discovered that one of the legs on my teal 171 cannon fodder just fell off while the darn thing was on display. Was kinda shocked, but I guess it's par for the course for these guys...

For what it's worth, I like the belly plate kibble as it ties it aesthetically to the YF-19. It's a nice consistent design element shared by the two Plus valks.

Wow, those arm connectors look almost identical to Yamato's. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

According to the captions, the front landing gear has to be bent at the middle hinge when pulled out and stowed. You can see that there isn't enough space for the wheel to come out straight. The other two are stowed with the wheels pointing inwards. They are rotated 180 degrees when folded out.

Aw... only two pages?

For what it's worth, it looks like the backpack hasn't been collapsed all the way. Also, the recent display models seem to have the backpack positioned higher up than the earlier prototypes. Was it redesigned?

Hm... I was looking at some of the earlier pictures, and the space between the backpack and the rest of the body didn't look that egregious. Also, it would help if a ton of the die-cast were packed into the legs to lower the center of gravity. For what it's worth, it'd be super disapponting if it couldn't stand by itself. I'd say that it's pretty much the only thing I want it to do better than the Yammie.

The penguinroid returns.

Turning up the brightness/contrast, you can see that it's rather thick, especially with the FAST Pack.

Don't the VF-31s all have ratcheted hips? What are the chances they'd go back to regular ball joints?

Way back when I first saw the YF-21, I had always assumed that the legs were the engines, just stored internally in fighter mode. Of course, that was before I knew that it could still fly without the legs.

I want to know if there's a good reason for it. Like, for instance, if there's some kind of internal mechanism that covers up the cockpit windows from the inside. Or if it's simply due to laziness or budget constraints.

Issues regarding accuracy aside, all I'm really looking for from the DX Chogokin is stability and heft. I want a toy that I can both play with and display. As much as I love my 1/60 Yamato, I never take it off the shelf or transform it because it's just so light, flimsy, and floppy. Even getting it to stand is a challenge thanks to the loose hips. As long as the DX Chogokin is a fun poseable figure that transforms, I think I can overlook most of its accuracy inconsistencies. That being said, the double-hinged elbows are indeed a point of concern, and so are those what look to be ball-jointed hips. Studying the images, it looks like pressing the black button above the hips will allow you to detach the entire assembly and replace it with that blue plate. Very reminiscent of the recent Transformers MPM Jazz figure.

Hm... I'm not sure about that. It looks like the legs go up into the engines. The shape of the legs makes it so that storing them horizontally would both make the fighter mode thicker and give the forearms less room...

Ah! As I had suspected, in order to fit in the larger legs, they store vertically in fighter mode and go up into the engines. It's really reminiscent of the first 1/72 Yamato. I really wonder if there's really any more space in fighter mode to beef up the arms... They look really squished in there as is...

To be fair... is a proportionally accurate transforming YF-21 even physically possible? The model looks amazing, yes, but it's no perfect transformer.