TMBounty_Hunter

What magazine is that from? EDIT: After some googling it seems that's an old build from the October 2017 issue of Hobby Japan and later compiled into the Macross Modeling VF-31 Siegfried vs Sv-262 Draken III mook.

Completely missed the April announcements back on Feb 5th, but I guess that's because Macross gets just 3 re-pops and nothing new 1/72 VF-1 Super/Strike Valk http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/17-2/ 1/72 VF-0 Battroid http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/20-2/ 1/48 VF-1S/A DYRL http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/65792/

Is there actually a way to watch this event after it happened? Youtube says it's been made private :\

Still no concrete date, no price, have some fresh CG renders

Presumably we'll get some update during Wonderfest Winter 2021, which was supposed to be a physical event on Feb 7th but due to COVID has been changed to an online event.

No new Macross for March and only a single repop, the Eggplane plus Minmay resin figure http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/65863/

Klan Waterslides seem to be part of a bonus set sold separately that also includes extra face parts? https://hobby.dengeki.com/news/1133110/

seems like just two fishes, a gun and effects parts? http://www.aoshima-bk.co.jp/special/acks/vfg31d-sp/

In my opinion Hasegawa and Bandai have complete polar opposite priorities when it comes to making model kits. The absolute, top priority for Bandai is gimmicks, and this isn't me just trying to use a word that some consider a pejorative when defending Bandai products. That's the actual word Bandai uses (ギミック) in lots of their promotional martials when pointing out features like transformation, pose-ability, multi-color or multi-layer injections, or their proprietary KPS plastic that allows them to eliminate polycaps at the cost of breaking down and cracking from some weathering products, etc. The gimmicks is what will dictate everything from parts breakdown to proportion and design accuracy. That last part really isn't a priority what-so-ever. Bandai has long and storied history of redesigning and reinterpreting subjects simply for the sake of redesigning them. Will adding the transformation or any other gimmick make the kit no longer accurate to the lineart? Bandai don't care. Gimmicks will always take top priority. The next high priority on Bandai's list is ease of construction. Sure this could count as a gimmick but it's worth exploring in detail. Bandai has been the king of snap kits for 30-ish years at this point and the whole time they've been pushing further and further in that direction. Some of the products they have now don't even require tools, the instruction show you can just rip the parts off the runner! Bandai's target audience isn't modelers, it's everyone on the planet. They know that 95% of the kits they sell will only ever be snapped and never see a lick of paint and that's entirely intentional by product design and marketing. They've steadfastly pursued reducing the effort the builder needs to put in to make the subject look like what's on the box. From proper color molding, glueless construction, hiding seamlines and other "quality of life" improvements Bandai has made it so that even if your hands are growing out of your ass you can still snap one of their kits together without a problem. Bandai's last high priority is mold utility. They know they'll be using these molds for 40+ years because they still use molds from 40+ years ago today. Thus the parts layout (and to a certain extent level of detail) is dictated by not just preserving mold life, but also making it easy to lock away certain portions of it to be able to use the mold for variant kits. They've always had "locks" on their molds that can redirect plastic to either not mold certain pieces or mold them in a different color but that has increased exponentially now that they have the P-Bandai store where designs with less "mass market appeal" can be thrown up with maybe adding one or two new molds and locking out some unneeded parts on the base kit's molds. Pretty much the only exception to the above in recent Bandai history is their Star Wars ships. This is the only time Bandai has demonstrated reverence to the source material and the true capability of their molding quality, with detail pretty much a whole order of magnitude sharper than anything present in their Gundam kits. And their Macross kits are sadly far more like their Gundam kits than their Star Wars kits. The only saving grace for their Frontier and Delta kits is those designs had a physically consistent transformation gimmick from the very start so not as much fudging took place. Meanwhile, when you look at Hasegawa they're just trying and make an accurate, sharply detailed model kit faithfully representing the subject. Sure you have to glue and paint and eliminate seams and maybe rescribe some detail but they trust that the people who buy their kits either have or are willing to learn those skills. While they might still be reusing some ancient molds and they may be iffy by today's standards but they sure were fantastic at the time they came out. MechTech mentioned the old Emily kit, and I think it's worth mentioning their new one that they put out in 2017, 50 years after their original kit. My god, the fine detail, both interior and exterior, the 11 crew figures. It's just amazing all around and has resulted in some astonishing builds that make you thing it's either real or at least a gigantic studio-scale hero model for some movie and not just a 1/72 scale kit available to an everyday consumer. And that kind of care and detail and trust in the abilities of the modeler is what Hasegawa puts into their Macross kits. Sure it's more work, but the work is the fun part, right? After that it's off to the shelf to gather dust!

LOL no, I'm nothing close to a data scientist. That's just Google Sheets and time that should have probably been spent actually building the models I have instead of ruminating on all the models that exist.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Basically something that only needs 1bit color depth to print instead of the greyscale needed for sketches.

Aww, I guess the days of clean lineart are gone, unless they choose to output 3D models are projections. Thanks for the info and book review!

One interesting thing that came up during this is that 65786 VF-1A "Rollout 001" is missing from all the usual online store back catalogs. Not Out of Stock or Discontinues, just completely missing. Was it an event exclusive kit? The typical red label that's on limited kits doesn't just say LIMITED EDITION on it but intead Feb.2009 マクロス進宙式記念. So was this an event kit instead of a regular release? Now that I think about it that list is also missing the 65160 Kawamori Expo YF-19 but should event kits really count toward this?

Does clean lineart of designs from Frontier and onward actually exist? Or did they go straight form design sketches to 3DCG models? I've been trying to find some clean drawings of the YF-29 but the cleanest things I found is 3DCG renders of Bandai's 1/100 models.

So I just couldn't stop thinking about it and decided to take a look if there's any actual trends or not. Here is as far as I could tell all the Hasegawa cartoon robot releases from the Macross franchise. Years alternate white/grey for easier readability. Red entries I consider irrelevant but they fill the SKU voids. Release dates were initially sources from Hobby Search and HLJ but then at least the year was verified with the Model Graphix Macross Modeling Catalog ~Hasegawa no Tsubasa~ (ISBN978-4-499-23227-2). Hasegawa's own website has a nasty habit of listing the date of the last re-release instead of original release date. After spending an evening getting that together now came the much harder part of deciding what's "New" and what's a re-release/re-box etc. There's about a million ways you could break this down. Adding Super parts probably counts for a "New" kit? Does changing it to a two-seater count? Where do the limited resin figures drop in? You could probably have 10-page long forum threads arguing about this. To keep it as simple as possible I've settled on it needing to be a "whole new machine", kinda like that occasional 新型機!? exclamation in the animes. So for this definition it needs to be either a whole new model of fighter or a substantially different form of it. Taking VF-1 for example we start with the Valkyrie kits, then the Battroid is a whole new kit, and we also count the Gerwalk as a whole new machine since despite using some Valk parts it has lots of newly molded parts that present a new configuration. Super Packs, EWACS, other strap-ons I'm calling decorative and not new machines. So here's the list of what I decided is "New" and the year of original release: 1/72 VF-1 Valkyrie - 2000 1/72 YF-19 - 2002 1/72 VF-1 Battroid - 2002 1/72 YF-21 - 2002 1/72 VF-0 - 2004 1/72 Sv-51 - 2004 1/72 VF-0 Battroid - 2006 1/48 YF-19 - 2009 1/48 VF-1 - 2010 Egg VF-1 - 2010 1/72 VF-11 - 2011 Egg YF-19 - 2012 1/72 VF-25 - 2013 1/72 VF-1 Gerwalk - 2014 1/4000 SDF-1 - 2015 1/4000 SDF-1 Attacker - 2016 1/72 Sv-262 - 2016 1/72 VF-31 - 2017 And here's a bar graph to visualize "New" vs reboxes I'm honestly encouraged by this. The last decade has been pretty solid with every year on average having one new machine and being padded out with 5-6 variants of previous ones. In the end though I still think when new molds are being considered the priority will be given to something shiny and current that can be cross-promoted and in the next year that'll probably be something from the new Delta movie. Though we can always dream of seeing giant dinner-plate sized parts for a 1/48 YF-21...

I'm actually kinda curious how Hasegawa measures up with development and production capacity vs all their neighbors in Shizuoka . It seems that overall Hasegawa much more than any other manufacturer relies on re-releases, whether it's just a decal swap or adding a resin figure. They also don't seem to have any product lines speficially aimed at kids , RC or Mini 4WD like Tamiya and Bandai do. Less diverse lines of products lead to less risk I guess?

Is there really that much profit to be had from Macross models though? Surely Hasegawa has always been doing the math all along. Macross has always been only a tiny fraction of their output and they're still primarily a manufacturer of military and other "traditional" models. If their choice is between making a new mold for some old WWII subject that'll appeal to modelers everywhere vs a Macross design that's only for a bunch of otaku then what's the more financially responsible decision? Plus the VF-1 is probably like 80-90% of Macross related merch out there and they already have that covered. I'm sure lots of people on this forum would love a 1/48 YF-21 and related VF-22 repops, but that's maybe a few hundred sales at most? Going a bit broader in the west going to model shows there's usually a few 1/72 Macross kits entered, maybe even half a dozen to a dozen per show but since it came out I've seen the 1/48 VF-19 only twice. There's absolutely more demand in Japan but really how much? 10k production run? That's on the far low end of typical model runs and some would claim isn't enough to cover the cost of the molds. With majority of those being bought and sitting in people's closet for years and years because we already got mountains of a backlog? If it was worthwhile for Hasegawa then we'd see way more 1/48 YF-19 and VF-19 decal variants since that requires no new molds but we've only ever got one almost a decade ago. Any new mold decisions would also be influence by possibility of cross-promotion and right now there's nothing really happening until the new Delta movie some out. There's really only 3 routes left if you want a company to make a kit: 1. give up and forget about it 2. keep posting about how it's not in any way viable and how it'll never happen to the point where it's a shock and a surprise when it does in half a decade to a decade 3. start a scratch-building project and by the time you're half-way done they'll announce it to spite you personally :P

Coming in February we have the VF-19A "SVF-440 Dullahans" with fast pack and high maneuver missiles: http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/65870/ As far as re-releases we get 65780 VF-1D: http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/65780/ EDIT: since the Dullahans are from the Master File it seems people have already done their builds way before the official product

That build was for TENGU Modellers event, which is a small but high profile hobby meet, not any kind of industry hobby show. I can't find the tweet right now but it was specifically said this is not an indication of future products. He did do another tweet later of using just kit parts, without proportionally modifying them and the results are nowhere near as great. I really wouldn't hold my breathe for a battroid kit. It would need mostly new molds if we want it to look good and all of them gigantic and it's doubtful that's financially viable. And that's before getting into structural problems. At this point the only thing I'd expect is VF-1D parts, since that needs only one new big mold (B runner), one small (Q1 runner) and new canopy

It really isn't AI, it's just a bunch of upscale and filtering scripts. It really does a disservice to the animation. The original film scan has all the detail you're gonna get out of it. Any amount of filtering you're either removing detail or pulling it out of your ass, both of which are detrimental to the look.

Boxart

Hasegawa repops for January: 1/48 VF-1A/J TV http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/mc02/ 1/48 weapons http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/mc04/ SDF-1 Movie http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/mc05/ 1/72 VF-1J Black Aces http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/65782/

The text does say 2021, so assuming the calendar doesn't just roll back to start of 2020 as the clock hits midnight, shouldn't be too far away. I was honestly contemplating collecting reference for a scratchbuild the past few months. Usually these announcements come AFTER you start a project just to spite you.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Not sure if this is the best thread for this question, but here goes the necromancy. Does anyone have a comparison good top-down between the Club-M and the Hasegawa kits? The reason I ask is that in playing around with the various lineart I discovered that the Hasegawa manual drawings (and presumably the kit) are quite a bit wider than the lineart in the THIS IS ANIMATION SPECIAL Macross Plus and YF-19 Master File books. Is the Club-M kit narrower than the Hasegawa one and more in-line with the older lineart? What I mean: Hasegawa lineart overlayed on top of the THIS IS ANIMATION lineart and matching for length, you can see the Hasegawa body sticking out quite a lot outside the old lineart