jenius

Takatoku made a VF-1D and a VF-1A Max for promotional purposes only (and they can be seen in TV commercials from the era). Those toys never made it into mass production (although plenty of customizers made them).

to be fair there was the v1, the vf27, the yf29, and now the v2. It's not like bandai didn't need numerous efforts to learn from to develop the line. I'm sure they might not have been 100 percent thrilled with the result but they probably felt the effort was there on the v1. I can't wait to get my shipping notice and do my own comparisons.

I did say the movie looked good. If that's what mattered to you then it delivered. I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't a shaky camera fest (which was one of my expectations).

Not at all, as Steven Colbert would point out, capitalism has spoken and this is one of the greatest films of all time and capitalism is never wrong. Clearly, it is I who has this movie all wrong. Here's the thing, after ROTF just about everyone involved with the movie said "Yeah, that movie kinda sucked, we rushed it out, we're not exactly proud of it, and we'll do better next time." So, I was expecting them to do markedly better. It's not like the franchise didn't give them a lot to work with. Honestly, I could have lived with plot holes and a mediocre story. What I hated was the unlikable characters and the time spent dwelling on them. It's like they were trying to get the audience to HATE Sam Witwicky for the first half hour. All he does and piss and moan... even to guys with machine guns. Did you have ANY respect for Sam Witwicky when he was ignoring the guys with machine guns and trying to drive his POS car into a secured government building? No, he seemed like an entitled ass. The story attempts to put him in his place when he's called "just a messenger" but then the idiot writing let's him use that as heroic redemption later. Perhaps it's unfair for me just to ramble about how bad this movie was without being constructive. Here's how I'd make the movie better: 1) The scene where the Autobots attack the Middle East in the beginning of the film can be completely stricken. Also referring to them later as rebellious teenagers can be stricken. What point did that serve? Instead, do the voiceover about the Autobots working with humanity to keep the peace to the scene where the Autobots show up in the Ukraine. 2) Remove the worm-bot with no alt mode. Remove the film's greatest line "Worm-bot is thirsty." For the love of Christ, remove that line. Instead, put Soundwave there and have him be MORE bad ass. I'm fine with him not having much of a personality, make him the strong silent type. Also, give him his angry kitty back along with Laserbeak. In the Ukraine ambush have it be a few recognizable Decepticons wrecking shop before vanishing. I said Soundwave, not Shockwave, Shockwave should either have replaced Megatron (see item 3) or been reserved for later. 3) If Megatron is beaten and beleagured REPLACE HIM. Have Shockwave be the new baddest baddy OR Starscream. I'm not saying Megatron can't have a role in the film, in fact I think the end of the film should involve the baddy who usurped him being destroyed and somehow that destruction should give Megatron a golden opportunity to repair himself and become even stronger for a future sequel. If the plot does require Megatron be killed, at least give us a scene of Galvatron leaving Cybertron as it partially emerges in Earth space. 4) Try not to make the audience hate the protagonist. There were a thousand ways they could have gone with Sam that would have been better. Instead of wasting time with his job hunting and the random and mostly pointless scenes where he's employed, have him working as an agent in what is essentially Sector 7. Let there be some humor there with the old Sector 7 guy and Sam's realization of how similar he's becoming to that guy. Let them stumble upon the moon plot with the help from that usually funny asian actor (perhaps as they investigate the deaths of people involved with NASA). Let's not have him lashing out at everyone because he saved the world twice and the whole world owes him so he gets to act like he has bigger balls than the military. The older lady and her romance with the older Sector 7 employee could be retained by making her the equivalent of Sector 7's Q (from the Bond stories). 5) Carly should have been a Decepticon sympathizer all along. Her boss should also be a Decepticon sympathizer but his role should have been limited by giving him an early death at the hands of the Decepticons. If Megatron then was replaced by Starscream acting in his place (perhaps after Starscream had nefariously seized Decepticon control by incarcerating a weakened Megatron) it would be a lot more believable if Carly then had a conversation with the Decepticon leader. The plot can have her start as a Decepticon sympathyizer who gradually warms up to Sam and in the end betrays the Decepticons (even more believable if her boss is killed at Starscream's homicidal whim). Also, a line in that currently terrible conversation should have gone something like "So it doesn't feel odd to you when this all is over you'll be taking your orders from an Autobot?" 6) The final battle needs to be slimmed down in a big way. As I said before, all that wasted time in the glass tower can go away. If Sam was a new Sector 7 employee the same could be true of the humans from previous movies so we wouldn't need all the over-the-top theatrics about soldiers in flight suits and all that jazz. Okay, these were just some thoughts but the portrait I'm trying to paint is that I don't think the changes I'm suggesting fall outside the realm of possibility and so my expectations weren't wildly disproportionate to what they should have been. I go into every movie expecting it to be worth the amount of time it's going to take... to me, DOTM was definitely not.

I think 1/72 is currently the perfect scale for Macross toys. At 1/72 a VF-1 toy could be made with everything integral including the heat shield and landing gear... 1/100 is just a bit too small. Also at 1/72 scale we would probably get more reasonable prices and the toys would still be significant enough on our desks to warrant the prices that would be charged. I understand why Yamato went 1/60 scale but that was 10 years ago and manufacturing has improved so much since then.

Wow... just watched this movie and it was horrible... just terrible. I can give it credit for two things: 1) Felt more comprehensible than the second film 2) Looked good Otherwise... ouch. My wife got up a half hour in and decided to go do dishes. She couldn't stomach Sam Witwicky's being an annoying little biscuit anymore. Seriously, watching Sam for the first thirty minutes of the film is painful. He only becomes stomach-able once his screen time is comprised of him running and ducking as stuff blows up around him. I assume the two pet autobots are supposed to be comic-relief but the only time I cracked a smile was when they said "Yeah, we gonna die." Not sure if I was smiling because they were dying or if I felt that they were going out on a good note. Remember that scene where the humans get together and climb up the glass building to shoot a rocket at the pillar? Remember how that lasts like 40 minutes before the Decepticons come and knock the building down and the whole scene's net result is essentially zero? I'm thinking there could have been a better use of that screen time (as someone noted before, seeing the Autobots get captured might have been something better to show the audience). That scene dragged on so long I felt like I was watching Skyline again. Good idea 1: let's make the main bad guy completely non-threatening by having him fall apart the whole movie. Better yet, let's make him so non-threatening that a shell-shocked blonde can stumble upon him and rather than fearing for her life, decide to strike up a mocking conversation with him. WTF? And what exactly was Megatron's plan? Did he think he and Optimus were going to shake hands after Sentinel was dead? Good idea 2: Sure, Decepticons are bad, but it'd be cooler if we symbolized how bad they were by having them spit green fluid when they talk. Good idea 3: Robots with personality are dumb. Let's make the Decepticons fairly generic looking and make sure they have no personality. To that end, let's start making them all look really insect-like. Heck, let's make one just be a giant worm with no alt mode (did I miss it?). Did anyone catch what the giant worm's alt mode was? I mean, it's not as stupid as movie 2's having Decepticons be able to perfectly recreate humans (which would end the series as we know it, replacing it with such hits as Revenge of the Body Snatchers) but a giant worm robot? All the Decepticons were getting pretty tentacle heavy as it was. It's good to have character designs so indistinguishable from each other that the audience has no idea of who was actually just killed. Question, which Decepticon had the best line in the third movie. Was it "You will die!" spoken by Megatron, Starscream, or Soundwave. There are no other options because I think that's the only sentence ever uttered in the movie by Decepticon's other than Megatron's "Oh no you didn't!" to Carly. So you might be reading this thinking "Idiot, you're thinking too much, it's a movie for kids!" I debated that a bit as I watched it. I'm guessing it's target audience is 13 year old boys by how often I was getting screen shots that made me have naughty thoughts about that Carly actress. The simplicty of the plot and it's over-reliance on action that seemed a lot like ants running from a magnifying glass might reinforce the 13 year old target demographic. There were some things that just didn't fit though. First, the lack of humor, but maybe I'm just too old now to find humor in the same things a 13 year old boy would find funny (my wife would be shocked if this is the case). Second, the violence. There were some pretty brutal human deaths in the beginning (which sadly, got me optimistic this film might not suck as bad as it seemed it was going to). Heck, an execution style murder of an Autobot was also pretty heavy. That said, the animated film was probably aimed at 13 year old boys and it didn't have a ton of humor and it definitely didn't shy away from violence.

Looks like Frankenstein in battroid mode. Needs a neck collar to elevate the head above that chest bump.

I think the only problem with your argument is that there's no collar shown in that line art... I mean, yeah, it shows there's a surface the neck is attached to but there would need to be that surface since the neck swings during transformation. In that line art the chest plate is just below the VF-1A's eye level. Where is it on a Yamato 1/60 V2 toy?

Post it, I'd like to see it. My line art resources are very limited. Another one lifted from Macross Mecha Manual, I believe this is a Kawamori drawn line art (but could be wrong). I tried to use this for my comparisons before but there's some elbow gun magic going on in that drawing.

I thought Ozma and Alto were released simultaneously in the V1s.

It's hard to reply and not sound like I'm flaming you because you're an animator but you should be aware that the animation in Macross is quite frequently quite poor, that various scenes portray the VF-1 in battroid mode looking quite differently, and the line art is official. The idea that the animators get it more right than designer is an interesting way to think outside of the box but in this case the animators were extremely inconsistent. As noted previously though, that BW sanctioned line art is not Kawamori's own although his own line art does show a recessed head and no high neck collar.

I believe member ValkyrieExchange had some bum shoulder VF-0A toys for sale fairly cheap.

Wouldn't you need to compare the first 90 minutes of Sheryl to Maia? I have no doubt she would have had very little character development and you'd still be right but the comparison as is is unfair.

I suspect the stores we've seen preorders from are simply jumping the gun. They heard from a distributor the price and release date so they took a batch of preorders to get the early converts before they had any idea on how many they'd be able to get. We'll probably see preorders open back up when shipping quantities are more clear.

I kinda wish the VF-14 was the common fighter in Frontier instead of the VF-171

Beagle line art comparison!

What's a 5000B look like? Will we get the VF-1 whale hunter customs? That'd be cool.

Based on the YF-19 exploding joints thread I think there might be some traumatic memories if they went that route!

There's an Alto hero version of the VF-171... even a Luca version.

I agree with you but the fact we got a YF-29 kinda makes me think anything is possible... although the YF-29 obviously had a lot of R&D benefit as far as a potential V2 VF-25 toy was concerned.

I would vote they leave the forearm as is and make the bottom section a bit fatter to accomodate the weaponry and make the weaponry a bit smaller.

Rumor has it he's been dead for a couple weeks, Apple just delayed announcing it until after the Iphone dropped. This rumor might just be fueled by the fact that no news article early cited the date of death.

This thread is very silly to me. "hey, what's the difference to the line art people are talking about?" "Here it is." "OMG, you are so stupid, how dare you compare a toy to the line art!" Got it.

Reivaj, your argument is a slippery slope. There's no denying the VF-19 is more expensive and very different. The argument that would be made (which is completely subjective and would undoubtedly be very rancorous) is if all the differences between the VF-19 and the VF-25 warrant the price difference. Let everyone with their wallets in hand have the debate internally. If you make it into a forum matter it just becomes another Bandai vs. Yamato pissing match.

Also because a lot of people aren't having joint problems. I only had a shoulder armor pop off once and didn't feel frustrated. The yf29 is in demand because lots of people love it... Most people don't know much about it so it's not like it's in demand because it's so iconic. edit: in traffic I remembered a couple more times the shoulder popped off. There's one really tough point for me getting back to fighter mode.