jenius

Isn't this entire argument moot because the meaning is the same. If she's the "beetle queen" then she's a queen of the Vajra. If she's the "little queen" then she's a queen of the Vajra. What does it matter?

From what I understand, the people of HG have tried to contact members of the original Japanese talent for projects (most notably, the Shadow Chronicles). For a number of reasons HG has been unable to obtain these original maestros so they've been forced to make do with what they have. Now, you might all be thinking that sounds crazy but you'd be surprised how hard some of these Japanese artists can be to find, let alone engage in any sort of business discussion with. Rumor had it that HG was so desperate to get into contact with these people that they were sending some of their reps to Japan to attend things like signing events. The fact is the name Harmony Gold means nothing to these original artists since Harmony Gold hasn't had to cut any of them a check in the past (and probably doesn't have much of a budget to do so now) and you get HG scrounging to make something worthwhile through the collective efforts of a bunch of fans and amateurs. So, I've got little hope of HG doing much to be proud of but maybe WB will dump some resources into this. EDIT - Grammar

Just got a review of the YF-19 up on my site. I was fairly impressed with the GNU but I think it prices itself out of the international buyer's realm. Here's a nifty scale comparison for everyone though: Visit www.anymoon.com for the review. I'll be putting up a Revoltech review and then pitting them against each other soon(ish).

Did you watch this? It wasn't all that Macross-y.

I believe that's concept art for the mech that became the Inbit Gosu.

They should make the CF their first version of all toys so when it falls apart they can claim "That's a FEATURE!" and fix it for the hero releases.

The rainbow canopy was in full effect on the one I saw.

Has there been any further explanation of what will be needed to get these?

Well it legally can't be "accurate to the original Macross" and has already been stated to be a "re-imagining" so it looks like you're pretty much stuck hoping for shiny special effects. If this thing actually gets made that's pretty much a given.

Too much of this doesn't add up to me: 1) If LAI is in league with Grace why would the son of a prominent member be placed directly in the path of peril (Luca's position as a member of SMS). 2) The Vajra are an established threat and hence, weapons are needed to remain secure against them. Think of it like the Cold War. Just because the US and USSR weren't actively coming to blow doesn't mean there wasn't a very real and heated arms race being undergone. You would think that even without the Vajra attacking en masse the humans would be buying weapons to defend themselves. 3) Grace has access to a small squadron of VF-27s which means there's some for of NUNS affiliation in all of this as well. EDIT - also, on the V-Virus, the Vajra are clearly specifically engineered to be controlled in whatever manner they are controlled so I don't think we'll find the V-Virus being something that leads to mind control.

http://anymoon.com/blog/2007/09/16/yamato-...-superfold-set/ It's in the first section.

I'm still hoping we don't get a capitalism = evil storyline here. That's storyline is as old as capitalism itself. I'm still holding out hope that the 117th stumbled upon something and now someone is either out to discover it or bury it permanently. There are lots of issues though. Do we know if the VF-27 is also a LAI product?

yes, all fixes included. The only thing with the YF-19 that gives me a hard time these days is getting all the seams tight.

Did the queen die though or just get really ticked off? didn't the queen in Aliens get banged up and she just shed her egg making equipment?

Yeah, that goes with the: line of thinking. I'm glad it wasn't supposed to be the Global's main cannon firing 'cause that'd be strange. So, does the sleeping Birdman on Galia IV save Alto?? Something has to happen with that BirdMan after all....

Alright, so i'm rewatching it and trying to make better sense of the subs. Correct me where I'm wrong: 1) After Ranka is taken by the Vajra Brera contacts Grace to tell her of what has happened. 2) Grace says this changes the plan and that capturing Ranka will no longer be absolutely necessary. 3) Grace says that she would still like Ranka captured but if that's impossible Brera should not let it bother him. 4) I believe when Brera protests Grace says something to the effect of "While she was our major objective here, she's still a secondary objective in the grand scheme. Still, if you witness something that confirms our suspicions so much the better but don't go too far out of your way to make that happen." She ends communications with Brera by stating she's going to blow up the whole planet. What's definitely NOT said in this conversation is "what exactly is Brera's number one objective now?" since all we really know is that he's no longer required to kidnap Ranka in the process. 5) She then hops up to gain a vantage point and locates where the Dimension Eater is located on a map (either that or confirms that the Dimension Eater will kill everyone on the planet with its blast radius although at the end of the episode this would seem silly since the blast radius is practically everywhere) 6) Brera shows up in the Vajra hive complex. Since his primary objective no longer involves kdinapping Ranka; he sets about accomplishing the grander plan which I guess we can deduce was for him to cause the Vajra armada to get on the move by pissing the Vajra queen off as he comes in with guns blazing after non-chalantly drifting down. Fortunately for him, an errant shot hits a crystal and everything gets all crazy. It seems like the crystal is something the Vajra queen is really sensitive about and when she's suffering she is able to make Ranka suffer. The how of this all could go lots of ways but then all the crystals start glowing and the Global fires its main cannon. You know what might make more sense? Maybe just the Vajra mothership built into the Global fired a main cannon up and through the Global to free itself so that it could launch. 7) Grace sees the main cannon's burst and smiles saying "It has awoken" which, in context, is an odd word choice. It does make some sense if my conjecture above is right and that Grace just realized that the Vajra would need to blast the Global free if they wanted to take off so the "it" becomes the Vajra armada she would know to be taking off. Brera is now inexplicably fighting Alto with some dialogue that seems to imply Brera has a personal dislike of Alto, "You don't suit her." Maybe whatever Ranka's fate is, her having a strong love for someone could mess it up. Either that or Brera is just a homicidal prick, figures he might as well kill Alto now since Alto will probably get in the way of his kidnapping her in the future (pretty optimistic since the girl was abducted by the Vajra), or Grace told him at some point killing Alto is another objective. 9) Grace calls her dog Brera off and tells him to go back and "wait for my orders" which seems to imply she'll survive the explosion she's creating in some way. 10) Grace then has an evil monologue which tells us that her killing Sheryl (whom she assumes is in bed) and all these Zentrans will cause a tremendous amount of hate. The Zentrans hurried mayday calls will be "their" guidepost but I'm not sure if the "their" is Frontier or the Vajra. She then wishes Frontier luck so it would seem like she's saying the Vajra are going to somehow follow the mayday calls to the Frontier. Did I sum it all up right?

I think Dr Mao was a scientist and Brera and Ranka are her creations more than her children

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?