Beltane70

The last two times I went to Tokyo I stayed in the Hotel Villa Fontaine in Shiodome. Their rates are pretty good (I paid around US$90-100 a night) and the rooms are a decent size. Shiodome has easy access to Akihabara and Ginza, as well as Odaiba. The closest station of the Yamanote Line is about a 5-minute walk from Shidome Shio-site, where the Villa Fontaine is located. There are a few other locations for the Hotel Villa Fontaine besides Shiodome. http://www.villa-fontaine.co.jp/eng/ As danth and wlfx mentioned, the Broadway Building in Nakano is a pretty good place for anme, manga, and video game merchandise. I have to admit that I am a bit biased toward the Broadway Building because a friend of mine and her husband happen to own one of the stores there.

Yep.

Yes, it is a kit. It's 1/100 scale.

It was reprinted in TIAS Macross Plus. The lineart also appears in Macross Perfect Memory on page 151. Perfect Memory also shows the throttle controls for the VF-1 having an afterburner setting as well as the overboost setting. The VF-1's throttle settings according to Perfect Memory text and lineart are as follows: Idle 1~2% Cruise 50% Military 75% Max 100% Afterburner 120% Overboost 200% Reverse TIAS Macross Plus also shows the lineart for the throttle controls on page 61.

I personally don't see anything wrong with the character designs. They look just fine to me!

Of course you also have to factor in the fact that they were also fighting a war for about 1/2 of that 10 years.

Wouldn't the copyright belong to the publisher of the book, which in this case would be Shogakukan?

No, I've seen Nismo written like that before. It's rare, as the o is usually a red outline, but they have used a solid circle on ocassion.

Excellent review, Graham! Is it just me or do the wings look just a tad too short? Certainly not enough to prevent me from buying one!

Both of thoese Zs are pretty sweet. The only thing I dislike is the color of the first one.

I guess it depends on how old of a 280ZX it is. I remember the later 280s looked a bit different from the earlier ones.

I personally never fall into the DVD trap of newer, "better" releases. I buy a series or movie once, that's it. I can miss out on added commentary and extras. Some titles I will wait for knowing that there will probably be a better version. Macross was the only exception to this rule, but that's only because of the cracking issue with the AnimEigo discs. Okay, I'll admit that getting Mari Iijima to reprise her role as Minmay for the dub helped. The only ADV title that I can even think of as far as releasing more than one version of a series is Evangelion, but they were merely reflecting the multiple versions that were released in Japan.

Isn't that more of a 240Z body?

Ah yes, seems my question has been answered! Just looked that one up. The original Gameboy was released first in Japan.

Is this actually the first a Japanese company's game system was released in North America before its Japanese release? It was pretty neat seeing the pictures of that line outside of that Sakuraya. I've been to that particular store on several of my trips to Tokyo and have never seen it that crowded!

Not that I'm defending bad CG, but wasn't Macross Plus' CG just limited to enhancing the standard cel animation instead of totally replacing it?

On the flip side of the coin, there's also more than enough bad customers.

Very cool! Hopefully, this means more GCA MG kits are on the way. I'd love to see both Jagd Doga and Geara Dogo as MGs.

I thought the details looked awfully familiar! Nice piece of work, I might add!

I remember the toys, but totally had no idea that they had made a tv show for it.

I saw several eBay price tags for over $3k at around 5:00 pm.

The first one sounds like it might be a continuity book from the way you describe it. I have one such book for the first Silent Mobius movie. The second is simply labeled "Grafitti Book". Grafitti books are pretty much what you describe as the contents. Character sketches, color images, pieces of lineart, and other little tidbits are pretty much the staple of this tyoe of book. On the third item, is the flight of Valkyries on the cover of the insert and is the insert a booklet about 8 pages or so? If it is, it sounds like it's the Macross movie program book.

What, am I the only person who has been pretty much satisfied with Macross both old and new?

Yes, I did. It took me about 6 to 8 hours over a couple days to beat Yazmat. With about 50 million HP, he took quite some time to defeat him.

I finished the Japanese version last week. Just in time to start the US release which I bought last night. I'm still debating if I want to spend over 300 hours on this version or not. I probably will, though, since I'm strange like that.