Graham

Never watch basketball (find it boring) and haven't played since high school 23 years ago.........LOL! As you can gather, a basketball anime, even it it is with robots and by Kawamori, is way, way down on my list of things to follow. Graham

What have you guys got against Alto? Personally, I thought he was a fine character. Not constantly whinning or being angsty, like many of the Gundam brat pilots, e.g. the Amuro, Camile, the one in Stardust Memory who's name escapes me for now, etc. He was willing to fight to protect what he believed in and didn't constantly spout pacifist slogans. Graham

Pass, no thanks. I have no interest in basketball playing robots. C'mon Shoji, let's have more Macross! Graham

I also doubt the whole "Bandai's gonna release standalone Super parts for the kits' thing. Graham

That is correct. Yamato's production run sizes are often quite small. Graham

Hope we get to see more of the Commando battledroids. They were pretty cool. Graham

By a few tweaks, you mean completely remove Jar Jar from the prequel trilogy and have Anakin starting as a young teen in the first movie, not as a young kid. Graham

It would be great if these came out in time for Christmas. I really want to have them under my tree to open on Christmas morning. Graham

When discussing whether Yamato is too greedy, one really needs to discuss this using Yen prices, not US prices, which are currently artificially high due to the crappy exchange rate. And of course you should not factor in shipping cost to you overseas as that is nothing to do with Yamato. Anyway IIRC, a standard 1/48 VF-1 without FAST Packs cost Yamato somewhere between 4,500 to 5,000 Yen each to produce. This is what Yamato has to pay the factory in China. The MSRP in Japan for a 1/48 VF-1 is 14,800 Yen, but this is of course not what Yamato sells the toys for. Again if I remember correctly what I was told, Yamato will normally sell the toys to a wholesaler at about 50-60% off the MSRP. The wholesaller will then sell the toy to a retail store at about 25-30% less than MSRP. The retail store then marks up to MSRP, or there abouts. Yamato is only actually making about 1,000 to 2,000 yen per 1/48. Graham

I definitely take issue with your use of the phrase "completely flawed products".. While the occasional Yamato product may have QC issues, some, minor, some major, it is hardly fair to label all their products this way. Graham

Previously a release date of Dec 31 was mentiones, but I'm not sure if that still stands. Graham

Dolph Lungren Punisher rules! Graham

Here's my no punches pulled look at the best and worst of 2008. Best Anime TV Series: Macross Frontier, without a doubt. Simply blew away all the competition. Awesome in all areas, i.e. action, story, music, animation, mecha and character design). Worst Anime TV Series: Hmm....a toss up between Gundam 00 (simply crap) and Golgo 13 (hugely disappointing). Dishonorable mention also goes to 'Code Gay-Ass the Douche of the Rebellion', for having the ugliest mecha and silliest looking characters. Best Anime OVA: Only watched 1 this year and it was crap (see below). Worst Anime OVA: VOTOMS Pailsen Files. I'm a huge VOTOMS fans, but this sucked. Boring story and horrible, horrible CG that looked like it came from a PS1 cut scene. Best Anime Movie: Resident Evil Degeneration. The only anime movie I've attached this year. Thought it was OK, so it wins by default. Worst Anime Movie: Nil - only watch one this year (see above). Best Live Action TV Series: Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles. Worst Live Action TV Series: Brothers and Sisters - my wife loves this, but I run screaming from the room whenever it’s on. Best Non-Japanese Cartoon Series: Star Wars - The Clone Wars. Worst Non-Japanese Cartoon Series: Transformers Animated - boring and ugly, ugly mecha designs. Even my 4 ½ son who loves classic transformers doesn't like this. Thankfully, he has good taste like his dad. Best Non-Japanese Animated Movie: A tie between Kung Fu Panda and Star Wars - The Clone Wars. Best Live Action Movie: Wanted. I actually enjoyed this more than Dark Knight Returns or Iron Man. Worst Live Action Movie: Didn't watch many this year, so no comment. Best Album: Macross Frontier OST 1. Worst Album: didn't buy any new albums this year, besides the Fronier OSTs. Bought lots of old stuff though. Best Game: Macross Ace Frontier (only game I've played this year). Worst Game: No Comment, only played 1 game (see above). Graham

Cough.........complete VF-25S page translation......cough......please! Graham

Is there any trick to getting S rank on the normal Sad Sniper mission. Can't seem to get higher than A rank. Dreading playing the Ex mission version if it's as hard as everybody says. Graham

Which only applies to those that have the skill, time and patience to build Hasegawas. The rest of us mere mortals (well, me at least), would like a reasonably priced, reasonble size dedicated fighter mode toy. Not diecast for me please. I've had terrible lucky with the paint chipping off the diecast after a couple of unfortunate drops. Graham

In the latest Japanese hobby mags released 25th November, there is no news of any new Macross Revoltech figures. Graham

Most of the people repsonding to that thread were quite negative to the idea IIRC. Graham

Watched up to episode 6 at the weekend with my 4 ½ year old son at the weekend. We are both really enjoying watching it together, especially the episodes that feature Clone Troopers. While it’s obviously aimed at kids, it’s nice to see they don’t shy away from portraying deaths. Explaining Clone Trooper Heavy's sacrifice in the episode 'Rookies' to my son was a bit difficult. I’m glad the Jedi are not uber-powerful here as they were in the Tartakovsky cartoon (Mace Windu & Yoda, I’m talking about you). Although we are seeing some extremely creative uses of the Force in combat, which is good. I especially liked seeing the Destroyer droids being used as bowling balls to knock down other droids. I’m just wondering where Lucas is going with the show, as he doesn’t seem to be portraying Anakin as angsty, whining, angry or frustrated at all. In fact, Anakin comes off as quite content and very respectful of the Jedi Council so far, even if he doesn’t always obey their orders to the letter. I wonder will Anakin be showing getting angrier as the show progresses, or will Lucas perhaps do a retcon (or make it an alternate universe), where Anakin doesn’t become Vader? Definitely prefer it to the 3 prequel movies overall and my favorite episiode so far is Rookies. Graham

Throughout the series we see numerous shots of cannon fodder VF-25 in fighter mode in the SMS hanger. IIRC we also see the tan cannon fodder VF-25 in action when several of them launch together with Ozma after SMS turns pirate. And of course there is the final episode as already mentioned. Graham

Easy. We see how it works in the anime. There is a scene in one episode, where the VF-27 is show parked or taxiing in the hanger in fighter mode and we see the the gun barrel splits open down the middle (just like when it is firinging a high power shot) and the front landing gear fits between the two halves of the barrel. Graham

There's an update on the DX toys on the official Frontier blog. First the Japanese: - Then the Google translation, which makes very little sense at all : - Make of that what you will. Graham

Am I the only one that actually thinks those latest set of pictures look really cool. I'd love to have larger hi-res versions for use as wallpaper. Graham

I was under the impression that the mecha you are given in EX missions were completely untuned and you did not get any tune points fro playing the EX missions and could not add/transfer any of your existing tune points. Graham

The recent issue # 130 of Figure Oh magazine, also had plenty of pics showing the crotch armor. IIRC, scans were posted a few pages back. Graham