KOG Water Dragon

Yep, I see HLJ has charged me and added it to my private warehouse.

Not gonna lie, this boxart kinda gives me some feels.

Oh I agree. My username is from FSS so I may be biased.

Nice to see some FSS action! If I'm not mistaken, I think most of the complaints were about the 1/100 version of the volks plastic Bang Doll kit?

To be fair there are far less battroid kits and far FAR less gerwalk kits than there are fighter kits. For Hasegawa especially, they released far more variants and decal swaps for fighter kits. Most of the special variants available as fighter kits aren't available in the other modes.

Paint?

Aside from the dish itself, the dish mounting structure and the lower fin thingies look pretty different. So I'm hoping we'll get a proper VF-171 EWAC release.

Same! I wanted a VF-171 kit for soooo long and now we have 3 options. I forget, was there a possible EWAC version announced too? And the big question: will anyone give us battroids?

I'm sure you'd be able to find it on ebay if nothing else.

I have no problem getting Hasegawa, Wave, and Max Factory stuff from HLJ. It's just Bandai that's problematic.

I'm finding it difficult to get ANY Bandai stuff at release from HLJ at this point. Both Macross and Gundam. I always put in a preorder for things I want as soon as they get posted to the store, but just about everything goes to backorder before I can get a copy allocated to me. For example, aside from issues getting the new 1/100 Macross kits and decals, I've been unable to get either the recent RG Impulse Gundam Spec II or MG Narrative Gundam ver Ka from HLJ. Most of my Bandai preorders wind up getting canceled because I can get kits at domestic retail outlets before HLJ ever finds copies for me. And the high cost of shipping now makes it less worthwhile to just wait for HLJ to finally get restocks.

Vermilion? 😅

I love this!

Yup, and this means getting 3 (one to display in each mode, as I'm doing for the other releases) will be expensive.

I'm disturbed that my first thought is "dang, I sure do like the hasegawa". I think I like seeing more of the jet intake vents at the top of the leg (hasegawa) vs less (max factory).

Yup yup. I will say though, I'm pretty happy that the battroid mode still has pilot stencils for the cockpit area. Do the Hasegawa battroids include pilot name decals? I can't recall at the moment.

Quite so. I believe JO and JYO are 2 different valid ways of romanizing the same japanese characters, we are just more used to seeing JO. That said, I probably would snip out the Y myself just so it looks more 'right' to my eye. EDIT: Just noticed, It's spelled Ichijo on the box. 😆

I was looking at these comments and thinking 'what? where's mine? why haven't I heard from HLJ?' And then, sure enough, I check my HLJ account and the VF-1J is in my private warehouse. I check my email, and yup, there's the payment confirmation email. Excellent. Going to be time to arrange a shipment soon.

I'm certainly down for a VF-1A, VF-1S, VF-1J Max & Miria, and Super/Strike. Despite having more Hasegawas than I can handle. But I DO wish that Hasegawa would release more custom VF-1 battroids, like they've done for the fighters....

Because despite my misgivings about hands that don't look like they can fit inside the arm openings and chunky hinged shoulder blocks that don't look like anything I've ever seen in artwork or animation, I still like the overall look and they bring back fond memories of both watching the show on TV and building the old 1/100 Arii kits when I was a teen. And I fully remember that those old Arii kits took a lot of liberties and had sections that looked totally different from mode to mode. I don't do toys, only kits. So my options these days are primarily offerings from Bandai, Hasegawa, Wave, and Max Factory. I prefer 1/72 so I'm not really looking at Wave for VF-1. I like the Hasegawa line, and I have a number of their battroids. Unlike their fighters, the battroids are only offered in a few flavors, so I don't have all that many battroids compared to fighters. And then there's Bandai... these also didn't get released in many versions, and they're pretty hard to get for a reasonable price now. I still haven't been able to get the p-bandai max/miria versions. That brings me to Max Factory as my main option to supplement my Hasegawa battroids. And as I said, I do appreciate the more anime-ish styling. Also, neither Bandai nor Hasegawa (or even Wave?) has done the VF-1D battroid, so it's kind of the only game in town for now...

They do.

At the end of the day, I can just leave the shoulders lowered, so it won't bother me much.

This is just me being picky, but I hope the articulation is stuff that would be consistent with what's possible in a hypothetical transforming version. Right now, I'm not sure if those upward hinging blocks that the shoulders connect to would work with a transformation to gerwalk/fighter. Where would those blocks wind up going?

I wonder how long before they do a VF-19F or VF-19S battroid? The Kai looks great but I'm still not a fan of the color scheme or head unit.

VF-1J is looking good with the stencil decals on. And dang.... the VF-19 Kai looks quite big and beefy next to the VF-1s.