jenius

Nothing really exciting to report but I got a new post up on my site: Anyone considering purchasing this toy should definitely check it out.

Um, that thing has child-bearing hips and women's legs... quasi-breasts (although no YF-19 uniboob) and no wings... what exactly is there to like about that design?

A new gun and slightly larger intakes? Pass. That connection SUCKS in comparison with the Toynami... and the Toynami connection ain't perfect either.

Yes, it's a Hyper hobby mag limited edition, see the hikaru 1/60 V2 thread for more details

this was reported in the Hikaru 1/60 V2 thread.

Wow... this just got more interesting. I won't be cancelling any preorders but I'm really not all that excited about getting the Michel and Luca any more (but I am still excited about the GBP + Ozma set).

Wow, we've had this much DX talk and there's even an article stating the DX is the way it is to allow it to be more durable and to function well as a toy and people are still insisting the model should be used for comparisons. The people who make these things disagree... trust them. If you don't trust them SK disagrees, trust him. If you can't bring yourself to trust either then it's your own inner demons you're dealing with. There was no conspiracy to make the DX less like the anime just to giggle at the people who would buy it. I think Luca is due out this Sunday (?). I'm hoping both my Michel and Luca will ship then. I'm looking forward to them but have some definite concerns about the armor.

VenomMacbeth, you should check out the link in my sig and surf around, you should be able to find out lots about the available Macross toys although some vintage stuff isn't there. Also, if something looks like Macross it was probably made by Takatoku first and then bootlegged afterward.

So Michael's 1/100 is going to have the speakers and sniper rifle eh? That's a lot more interesting than Ozma's.

So does that make Kawamori an inexperienced third party Chinese designer?

Turn back now....

Simmer, Late April is still a month away, we'll probably hear something in a couple weeks.

Wow, I'm no artist, but this has to be the WORST cover art to anything I have ever seen: ebay link to Robotech laser disc Seriously, with cover art like that, I'm beginning to understand why the few Southern Cross fans there are think HG railroaded that section of Robotech. That's just heinous.

While "everyone" may keep saying that, it's nothing at all like what I've been saying. I thought we all understood, HG has no IP rights to Macross. There can be no doubt though that they own every right to Robotech. Therefore, the story of a guy named Zor, a spaceship with a matrix that makes energy, a group called "the Masters" sending their puppet army to retrieve said Matrix, would all easily be fair game. So the big plot points are all there to make a Macross-type story that's different enough, the real trick would come in the characters and terms used for the aliens. HG keeps claiming "We own EVERY right to Robotech" and of this there can be no doubt. It's where Robotech blurs with the originals that there is reason for speculation.

My review is also up, check it out here.

Bandai isn't behind BW at the moment... Bandai wanted to release Macross goods in the US and BW appears to have shut them down. It's best to look at all the companies individually. I think it's safe to say BW>HG on their own regardless. HG's rights to Macross have been established and do hold up in court... because they've been through the court systems and that's how we got where we are. There are lots of things HG needs to avoid but the story of ROBOTECH is different enough. If the movie has a guy named Zor send a big spaceship to Earth using a super energy source and then some goons come to find that energy source there wouldn't be a problem as that's nothing like Macross. Everything beyond that HG needs to be really careful with. The aliens wouldn't be Zentraedi, etc.

You certainly can't please everyone. I thought Mac F was a lot better than other stuff out there. I really don't think there's any valid way someone can say "softcore hentai" in respect to this show... it has some guilty fan service moments but you're watching terrible softcore if this reminded you of it (and really, there are so many better things you could be doing with your time). The first seven episodes laid the correlations to past episodes a little thick for my liking but you also have to realize that the vast majority of the audience isn't as versed in Macross as the people on these boards so they didn't feel like they were being bludgeoned by the references as much as we did. I really appreciated the subtle nods (the dragons, the hand gestures, certain camera angles during mech action) but I was pretty put off by the early plot re-hashes from other series and I'm glad that didn't persist much beyond the first quarter of the show. The Vajra comparison the the Inbit has its points but Mospeada was about a band of freedom fighters and their trek across the world... not about human in-fighting over alien technologies. Mac F has a whole heck of a lot more to it than Mospeada (full disclosure: I am a big Mospeada fan). I thought that episode was easily amongst the weakest in the "lets cram as much Macross (original) and Macross7 in one episode as we can." So, while I'd say I really enjoyed Mac F I did have some issues. For one thing, I think the writers tried WAY too hard to create mystery and muddled the plot up in the process. A little mystery over who is after what is fine but between Leon/Glass/Grace/Grace's voices in her head/Brera/Biler/Vajra/Galaxy/Global I kind of gave up caring and just started thinking of Grace as the pure evil substitute and that's not very fun. There were a few other aspects I felt could have been better but overall I liked the show enough to easily recommend it and so far I haven't heard anyone truly unhappy with it... usually I got rather rapid requests for more DVDs.

It looks a bit chunky undereath those front gun booms.

At the risk of being the bearer of bad news, models will nearly always be much more accurate than toys. Bandai has already shown us that they care much more about their toys being things you can play with so you should be expecting lots of compromises with the GBP. So far I think its worked though, the DX is a hot seller and even with that many people handling these toys frequently all we really hear about is paint chipping and a few people who had broken screws. While the screws are lame I'd say that's not really a design problem, just a bum deal on crappy screws that got tightened too much. I just hope the GBP does a really good job of staying together and holding tight to the toy, I'd much rather it do that and not look PERFECT than look PERFECT and blow off in the wind or crack during transformation.

I think the problem with it looking so over done stems from the fact the 1/60 VF-1J is bleached white. The slightest smudge would go a long way on that bright-ass plastic. That scheme might have worked on something more gray/brown/or olive drab.

I believe the Galaxy Defender was sold at Walmarts... it was pretty common (the VF-1 one) for a while there but I never bought one.

That's not all that much different, you're just not getting screwed by the EMS shipping costs.

Maybe you guys can clarify for me what is happening in the first episode. So, man made the NeoSapiens, then the NeoSapiens rebelled, then man made peace with them and that peace has been going on for 50 years right? The intro then says the Neosapiens rebel again (IIRC) but that doesn't happen until a few episodes into the first season right? It looked like the one Neosapien was using the pirate menace as a means to get the military out of the way.

I watched episode 1 on Hulu thinking I'd probably buy the DVDs but it was horrible and confusing. I think it was only confusing because the introduction (the shows opening) seems to take you well beyond the first episode. So, you get the events that are about to happen, summarized for you, then the show starts and those events haven't happened yet. To make things more confusing, similar events have already happened, 50 years ago. Very very odd start to the series. Add the horrid animation to that and I watched the whole episode with one eyebrow up. I might try another couple episodes, so the plot can get past the introduction's summary, but it's definitely not easy to watch with the designs being so bad and the animation worse.

For the person who asked about Overdrive taking orders from the extra website exlcusives, their latest news item says: