jenius

It really isn't a big deal at all (Personally, if they're not built into the toy then I don't like them). When a Valk toy is in battroid mode there are gaps under the armpits that let you see inside the toy. In the anime those big gaps aren't there. When Yamato made their 1/48 version GBP they created the gray part in the armpit pictured below:

Yes, there seems to be a strong likelihood that Ranka and Brera are related. She's called him 'brother' a couple times and he's familiar with the song Ranka is familiar with. In the subs Brera tells Alto he's not good enough for Ranka which seems more like a brotherly defense than jealousy or hatred.

Yep, that was exactly where I was going with the supposition that LAI is involved in something fishy here. Regardless of whether or not Luca's family knows what Luca is doing on Frontier they know he's there in some capacity. Heck, they're even letting him borrow fold equipment. I would also guess that his family would be well aware of his activities with SMS. He explained in the last episode how his involvement with SMS is right up his family's alley to Leon. Now, if the next episode starts with Luca being sent away from Frontier just before the Vajra show up then I'd think that'd cement some evil LAI involvement.

I specifically looked for side covers when I was in Japan and didn't see any. Sorry guys. The one I looked at didn't have any inserts or instructions yet so I guess there's an outside chance but I'd say it's pretty doubtful.

These theories are decent but something about them just doesn't add up. Grace doesn't need to do ANYTHING to instigate a Vajra/Human conflict. All things considered, the Vajra and the humans are already at war. If all she wanted to do was to cause another battle between Frontier and the Vajra then there had to be an easier way then blowing up a whole friggin' planet. Why do the Vajra get all uppity when Ranka sings on Frontier but they don't notice her until she goes to urinate (or what have you) on Galia IV? Also, maybe I'm being a bit too logical here, but how many weapons out there can do damage in the way that Super Dimensional Bomb does? Also, are weapons of mass destruction monitored in any way? Isn't a clerk somewhere at LAI going to notice that someone checked out a planet destroying bomb and forgot to check it back in? And if LAI is in on this then why do Luca's parents hate him so much? He seems like a sweet enough kid. None of this is meant to be criticism, I must suspect we have a lot more scratching to do before we get beyond the surface.

Do you guys really think that humans are going to blame Vajra for a planet being eaten like that? Does Frontier even know that the Vajra were there? I think the closest thing that would happen to that would be "We've lost contact with this planet." "Darn, something must have happened." Now, when they start analyzing what those 'something's could have been, a likely "possible" cause would be the Vajra. I would think it'd be more likely after the insurrection that the bigwigs on Frontier would deduce there was a little mutually assured destruction on the parts of the two Zentran factions (they were toting around reaction weapons). In fact, I'd go so far as to say that that was why Grace tried to induce the battle: so that she could destroy the planet and make it seem like the conflict caused everything to be wiped out there. Besides, the humans and Zentrans already hate the Vajra, it didn't take the destruction of yet another human installation to get them really angry or something. It's good to see that humans finally figured out how to use the super dimensional bomb without merging all sorts of dimensions together and causing a super dimensional century.

In my experience, superior in every way (except selection maybe).

Looks fantastic, did they do something different with the windscreen?

If this is the same bar I was at... it is really cool... and it has cute girls to boot!

I wouldn't worry too much about the toy being either 1/48 or 1/55, since these are relatively small toys the difference in size isn't very large and the CMs Legioss and Toynami Alpha are both somewhere between the two scales... so the Gosu probably would be also.

Thanks for any input guys. Just to clarify, the company in question is NOT Toynami... it's a Japanese company.

C'mon now folks, these "exclusives" aren't something to be upset about. If you lived in Japan and did the work you would get them for about MSRP. It's not Yamato's fault they can't sell to the US and they seem to be just "having fun" with the 1/48 mold now by pumping out some low volume toys. For them they get to make a toy, have it at least break even, and not have to worry about back-stock. I don't really see anything wrong with it or the people with enough cash to pay a premium for them. It sucks that BW and HG hate each other and it keeps toys out of our hands... but that's about it.

Yes, the boots match the bike, the rest of the armor is a darker green. Beagle has it correct.

The chase is a VF-1 "Low Vis" but the paint scheme is different from the 1/48 in that it has a black line that extends from the canopy down the top of the nosecone.

I didn't mean for it to sound like I was agreeing with that whole detachable leg bit... I was just trying to paraphrase a statement that was made when the first 160s were coming out. As pointed out by others, there is some mechanism there and there definitely aren't free floating legs in transformation.

I don't catch the reference? Is Tim Eldred like an HG guy or something? I thought Zents was a neutral term but yes, my snafu on the "reaction" vs "reflex" weaponry bit.

That's all fair enough but in this instance it's the "first generation" portion of the sentence that leads to the confusion. Is there a generation of Macross ships that all look similar? Did all of those ships come to be known simply as a Macross?

We don't get a very good glimpse of it but the original Supervision Army shipped looked substantially different from the SDF-1 Macross and the sillouette we're treated to looks like a dead-ringer for the human-modified form. Basically, it seems highly unlikely it isn't a human ship, check out the bridge: Add to that the fact Alto looks at it and says "That's the Macross" and it certainly seems to be leading us to one conclusion. Of course, it wouldn't be MacF with some confusion heaped upon it. My sub version of the next episode preview calls it "A first generation Macross ship" which is wording that could imply it might not be *THE* Macross that survived the Rain of Death although there's some talk of past heroism also. The episode preview ends like this which begs the question... will that ruin end up looking shiny and new at some point in the next episode: I was also certain that that eyeball was too similar to the eyeball from MacZero and would have to be a Protoculture entity like the Bird Man but this picture Makes me wonder if it isn't just Varja related... but then again, Varja and the Bird Man may still be strongly related.

Canon = canonical as in Yamato said their toy had detachable legs because, according to them, the legs actually do detach momentarily when a VF-1 transforms as designed by Kawamori. They have since seen the light and regardless of what is *supposed* to happen with the legs, they realize that toy fans don't like parts- formers.

Maybe I'm just exhausted... but I thought this episode pretty much sucked. I was shocked to see that I'm like the seventh person to give it a negative review. Sure, the music in the series is still great but the plot of this episode was kinda painful... like... really painful. Even if I forgive the growing Lost-style of just heaping more questions on top of questions and going seemingly out of its way to avoid giving answers ('cause honestly, sometimes that's fun, as evidenced by Lost's ratings) this episode just left me scratching my head and I'm not even talking about that WTF-1 at the end. Is Sheryl still considered important by anyone? How does sending one fighter to escort her while at war with an enemy of unknown capabilities (Varja) to a base with a very uneasy population of well-armed Zents make sense? What are the odds that at some backwood planet there'd be three clones of the three most major Macross Zentraedi all hanging out? What exactly was Alto going to do when he got into his VF-25 that would have been of any consequences? There were two Zentraedi factions in a standoff with reflex weaponry and Alto was going to do something about that in his lone VF-25? Do the new Q-Raus suck that bad where Alto could have super roboted them all? I also have to assume that the VF-25 only costs a few hundred dollars to make if Michel can just hop in his and do whatever he wants without reporting to any sort of command structure. Sure is cool that Luca just happened to get a magic fold device in this episode also. Some spots just felt really unnatural too. Alto hurriedly flies to the concert then switches to GERWALK and drifts away in reverse... it just seems odd. Then the Qamzin-like guy hops up and duels with him and that whole bit feels disjointed from everything else and once again Alto pulls his silly blade. I can kind of stomach the blade with the Vajra now because it seems capable of piercing their armor for some reason but stabbing a Q-Rau to death? Odd. Mac F continues to be really strong with the characters and how they interact and the slow, tedious method in which attractions transform into love so even though I thought this episode was overall pretty terrible by MacF's own standards it was still a step above a lot of other rubbish out there.

Sweet thanks! PM'ed ya -

Ooh an authentic Japanese ride armor... me likey. Any chance you want to take a picture of the front and back of the box and a close up of the manufacturer's Gakken of Japan stamp on the toy for me so I can add them to my review on Anymoon.com?

Yeah, I prefer Yamato's more secretive approach to Toynami's "Here's what we'd like to do" approach... since they seem to have no grasp on reality.

DYRL paint schemes = boring (except the 2 seaters which are obviously pretty unique). Gimme TV and non-canon schemes!

Even Graham has stated that the VF-0S Focker Ghost combo is the only VF-0 toy to date that incorporated all the fixes. I would avoid any VF-0 toy before it, including Shin.