KOG Water Dragon

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.

Need a 1/72 battroid and a 1/48 fighter.

I'm just bummed there's still no Hasegawa VF-1D battroid, since the plamax won't look at home with the other Hasegawas.

Yeah. Just won't look at the back too much. 🤣

Wow. The vertical stabilizers on the battroid ARE tiny. Why did I have to see that. 🤣

Do I want each kit to look like a different mode of one singular design? Um... yeah? 😅 This lineart definitely convinces me that I'll want to use the larger heel option. I'm also seeing the overall design is tweaked quite a bit compared to the art, which is fine. I'm mostly just looking for some consistency between the Hasegawa kits. Maybe it's the fighter kits that are goofed. The heel pieces seem absolutely massive on those.

Of course I just meant they were free to make an 'accurate' battroid mode without having to make concessions to the realities of making it transform... Mostly surprised that the pieces look absolutely nothing like the corresponding pieces on their fighter kits.

Don't get me wrong, I'm super happy too. I'm just puzzled, since this is a fixed mode kit where they can make it look however they want, why do the heels not really look like other YF-19s on the market or the heels on their very own fighter mode kit. The Hasegawa 1/72 fighter The Hasegawa 1/48 fighter Other battroids

I'll probably enjoy the Max Factory kits more with a bunch of warning stencils and other decals added on. Now the Hasegawa YF-19 battroid in the other thread... THAT has me excited. I hope Hasegawa stays in the Macross game long enough to bestow us with at least a YF-21 and VF-11 battroid series. If they continue and do battroid versions of the VF-25 and VF-31... that would be amazing. Now see, I love RGs and MG ver Kas, so that probably explains my taste in Macross kits. Further, I got started on scale model kits (jets, wwii prop planes, cars) well before I got near any anime/mecha stuff, so that also informs my preference for complexity and detail. Like... I know what an F-35 looks like. I know it would have to be simplified a lot if it were to appear in an anime. In my head, I understand that difference. And I sort of reverse engineer that thinking when looking at anima mecha, and I think about what they'd look like in real life. And that's how I like my kits, since they are also 3d physical objects and not artwork on a screen or concept art sheet. I only own a few HGUC kits, really only stuff that isn't available any other way (Hathaway's series, the big GP03 dendrobium, AOZ stuff). All that said... the Max Factory kits do hit a fun nostalgia button. Looking forward to seeing if they do supers. I think art indicating they might was floating around before. Also hoping for VF-1A, VF-1S, and Max/Miria VF-1J at minimum.

So uh... which version of the heels are people liking for this one? I find the look of the smaller heels really weird, with it having to rest on the edge of the heel instead of the heel lying flat. I think I'd have to use the bigger heels.

I think it's easier to be OK with the curve in a simple anime style drawing, but it's a bit more obvious in a 3d physical object. It's mostly that the front of the upper leg is SUPER squared off and flat, while the lower leg is super rounded. Kind of a weird incongruity between the 2 sections. Plus the hands don't look like they can fit inside the wrist openings. I grew up on the animation, and yet my adult self prefers the 'real world' style. But I DO like the poses these Max Factory ones can do.

I feel like the front of the lower legs is just a little too rounded for my liking. The thing I like about the Hasegawa kit is that it's believable as a jet that can somehow origami itself into a humanoid shape to find giant aliens. You see a lot of the jet DNA in the battroid. The Max Factory kit is fun and definitely brings back memories of watching the show, but it also feels like something designed to look like a cool robot, without needing to acknowledge realities of the other modes. But I'm not kidding anyone, I will be getting a copy, along with any other variants in the pipeline. I do wonder if these will include a decent amount of decal warning stencils and such. The demo in the photos doesn't even include the U.N. Spacy text from the gunpod and the side of the legs. Or the ID number on the lower stabilizers.