PointBlankSniper

Bruh... I am now hoping with all my might that the sunrise macross doesn't look like panty & stocking...

I honestly think 1/48 is a bad idea with how much bigger and pokier later valks are. It could probably sever some body parts if you dropped it.

The YF has canards, engine top stabilizers, engine bottom fins, variable wings that sweep forward or tuck backwards all the way to being longitudinal against the engine, and the area above the intake gets a corner that closely tapers back to the fuselage. The outer calf stores a single missle. The basic VF-19A is this in different paint. For the purpose of this topic, it's basically not the VF everyone is refering to. The VF-19E/F Advanced from frontier is just a clone of this with a new canopy and VF-25's super part's booster. The VF everyone speaks of are all the other suffix models. It has no canards, stabilizers are mounted on a panel that wraps down the side of the engine and reaches to where the fin itself sits on top of the wing, no engine bottom fins, "fixed" wings (still hinged for transformation) that comes out backwards partway before angling into built in forward sweep, and additional has ankle guards. The outer calf stores a set of micro missiles. The area above the intake stretches all the way behind the canopy and follows the edge of the wing root without transitioning into any sharp angles. All the squadron paints are done on this. The limbs and shields between the two are basically all different as well. The general difference in those parts is that the YF is more blocky and trapezoidal while the VF is rounded and bulbous. Essentially, the two only share the front half of the fuselage, which is basically the core torso, and. I think gunpod. Maybe the thruster nozzle/feet, I'm not sure. The Kai/Basara Custom/Fire Valkyrie is kind of a frankenstein between the two. It's the VF as the base, but it has the canards. The wings are variable, but I don't think it's actually the same geometry as the YF. It has VF style stabilizer sitting over it. It also has a custom gunpod, for those speaker things Basara shoots. The Nothung is that heavily altered blue one above. I think its some hobby magazine custom build for some side story stuff.

You are giving me too much credit. I'm not qualified or skilled in anything. I'm just a pedantic critic, and bandai's negligence on so many fronts is triggering all my 'tisms lol For the collar, I get that there is supposed to be a slight incline, but I think bandai has way gone too far. With how deep towards that back the collar stretches, it just looks like there is that much more of a slope. Then the top of the backpack towers over the battroid's hood, when it should be lower than the hood. Maybe my desk height and eye level gives me a view that makes the worst of it. I'll admit I actually think the art accurate fighter nose length is a bit goofy, so whatever bandai did for fighter nose is actually fine to me. It's just that in principle, since they went through with all the changes just to have the fat calves, they should have commited all the way and gone for the correct battroid torso length. The same holds true for the thigh to knee sections. Ignoring the torso, if you just compare how low the knee cap ends on the DX, to where it is in the anime art in that anymoon image, you will see that the fat calves did not get the correct length of accompanying shins because the thighs took up all the height. Anyway, as I said, I'm not skilled in anything, so there is no big project. I'll try to depict my idea sometime, either in text, or very crudely edited images in MS paint. I should add that I've even thought of a way to shorten the nose even more than yamato. There is definitely mix and matching from bandai and yamato's designs, and even some cheating in how the line art is interpreted, but I don't think the results will irk anyone. There might even be a side effect of having room for chunkier forearms, but that is gonna be hard to verify. Maybe if I make enough sense, someone else can make something of it all. First, I still need to get the DX into delimiter mode and high speed mode at least once, so I have a grasp on all the features before I go on and speak of fancy ideas out the bum.

I first got the Max YF-29 from preorder madness and don't rembember it having ratcheting hips. I remember when I went back to collect Mirage's AX from mandarake second, I noted to myself that I finally got to experience the fabled ratcheting hips that everyone wanted to be backported to old releases, that Max's 29 didn't have. I don't want to fiddle with my unit to check, but I've now just checked wotafa's review of Max's 29, and neither saw nor heard ratcheting when he moved the hips. I just checked anymoon, and the chest ratchet was documented as a change since Alto's YF-29 full set pack. And I also agree with his review that the ratcheting points are so far apart that they serve little purpose. He also mentions the move from one hip screw to three hip screws, but still no sign of any ratchets there. Jenius doesn't seem to have a Max review at all, so it's not even possible to conflate which unit he found the feature on. Anyway, the VF-25's hips have been documented to cause increasing ire from the anniversary version, to Alto's revival, to Michael's revival. I've seen complaints even on japanese twitter accompanied by the flood of stock and price drop on mandarake, especially for the latter unit. It's true that the 25 just got the chest ratchet and the 3 hip screws on these WWM/revival line, but those do not appear to bet new to the 29. Max preceeding the revivals, just adds a data point to how those three screw hips are decreasingly helpful. It just makes things more worrying for the 27, if the internal joints are from the same molds, since there's still the Armored Ozma and Tornado Alto production runs to get through. The only copuim fueled saving grace is that Michael's unit's reputation got so bad, and knowing how heavy Ozma's armored parts are, it could have forced bandai to finally tighten their molds up. But that is very wishful thinking, despite having Ozma's unit preordered myself.

I've now gotten around to putting it into battroid. As someone who still hasn't watched the anime, and only seen screenshots and toy depictions, this still seems very off to me. The thing has got way too much thigh, thigh ring, and knee, just for the sake of staying in proportion with the nose cone, which itself is way too long for the mode. Ignoring the proportions for a moment, I almost feel like some of the tabs were designed out of pure spite, malice, or mental illness. The backpack to collar plate, and then the collar plate to nape connections, both use a pair of micro pegs each. Tthey don't seem to have any significant latching bumps on them. Just why? There's enough material behind them to continue the shape into mega big latching tabs that could have outright deleted any hint of needing a brace. Instead, the made micro pegs that won't hold. The neck to chest tab on the other hand, demonstrates they are willing to make such mega fat tabs. Except, over at the neck, it just gets in the way of transformation. The rear neck joint was tight as can be for me. The tab was so thick that I couldn't cheat a little with flex and let it guide itself in. The whole setup resulting in needing to wrangle the neck joint with the head popped off, so I could properly extend it all the way for the tab to clear the chest slot. Back to the proportions. The angle of the intakes and collar are very wrong when with all the correct connections and brace in place. It's way too high in the back, causing a steep slope towards the front. It seems way more anime and line art accurate to just let the back sag and flop as it pleases without being connected. This whole thing just adds to the number of derranged design decisions. From what I can tell, if they didnt have so much thigh length, they could have shaved that length from fighter mode. That would allow the leading edge of the wings to come in at a more perpendicular angle and be more proportionate to line art. Shortening that section would also mean cutting down the absurdly large collar plate for battroid. That would cause the nose cone to proportionately become longer compared to the rest of the plane, without actually being altered. That section including wings being longitudinally shorter should also mean lighter, stiffer, and less torque for gerwalk to keep from wanting to split open at the battroid joints. The best I can say so far is, in a vacuum, this toy functions as "intended" by bandai's designers. I still have to try delimiter mode for a complete judgement I guess. And I forgot to swoosh in the proper high speed mode after being obstructed by trying to do it with the fast packs on. Contemplating transforming the YF-19 to see how they match up in the same forms too, but it feels like a lot of work. At this point, I think I've pretty much given enough ideas to make this to way more anime and art accurate than bandai, simultaneously in all 3 forms. I haven't even spilled my solution for keeping close to the canonical leg transformation while still leaving the engine space alone and not cheating with it as a hollow shell lol

Yeah, I get that I made a lazy absolute statement that's technically untrue, but these changes have so far had negligible effect, while they skimped on truly making improvements. The effect of the chest lock is allegedly intangible, while the hip changes, including the extra screws, seem have done nothing as well. The hips instead are said to have even become worse, possibly because of the old parts having worn out molds. The 25G revival hasn't been selling very fast after so many rounds of this. It's possible they do change something, but I think it's best to expect that possibility low, and the effectiveness of it even lower, if it actually happens. They had the chance to rework the parts forming bits of the super parts, and braced the wings with integrated solutions in preparation for the tornado parts, but that doesn't see to have happened. I don't expect the 27 will get extra care after seeing that. IDK if the 27 shares stuff like hip parts with the 25s, but I'm hoping it doesn't inherit the new jiggly hips. Considering the trend of their efforts in quality and design, I think it's already asking for a lot that these revivals and WWM releases come out no worse than the originals, plus matte coating, despite the chance of "improvements" lol.

It's highly unlikely that they change anything, given the track record of these revivals. That means it's probably gonna have parts that are older than the renewals, like the tornado, since both of these recycled the original release's parts for their renewals.

Mine has finally come in, somehow unopened, even after YYK did an inspection. I guess the only explanation is that those circular seal tapes are applied by retailers. Everything seems to be in spec as expected, since it was inspected. They put it back together fairly well. Just some minor gaps on one belly plate that seem to need a full transformation to fix, but nothing too far out of ordinary from the usual out of the box slop. I've only gotten around to putting it in gerwalk so far. I can't believe after all my efforts at snorting coping, writing off the lock pin and brace as unnecessary, pretending gunpods are landing skis, etc, my delusions of a perfect transformation were dashed by the fast pack's arm pieces. There is just no way to slide the stabilizers forward with those things on, or even just bank them inward to achieve high speed mode. The killer move is that to open the hand covers, you need to fold the rudders, which automatically ejects the fast pack bits no matter what. 😭 If they had just reused those rotating pylon mounts from the Lil Drakens and Super Ghosts, none of this would be a problem. The packs could rotate out of the way for all the transformations, and they wouldn't even need to create a new mold for that peice. A bonus would be that the stabilizer fins could accept other pylon weapons, for added play value, if they ever made any missiles available. 🤡 The uncleaned sprue marks are also indeed kind of horrifying on the exposed top edges of those parts. Anyway, enough of those fast pack arm parts. My transformable gunpods seem to hold fine in the belly packs. Due to the initial slop, one of the landing gears even reached the floor with the pack and real gunpod mounted. I couldn't tell where the slop really came from, but it almost felt like the correct amount of slop on both sides would already have been enough to solve the miserable landing gears. The whole thing feels almost as heavy as the Armored Kairos Plus, while the stand is kind of jiggly for me. Not that it's an issue for me yet. Will have to see if that hurts battroid a whole lot. All in all, it's still generally a decent toy that holds together if you ignore the very derranged design choices. The only real "unintended" issues I have from playing so far are the shoulders unseating from the intakes too easily, and the usual hand tabs wanting to eject weapons, as with most toys and model kits. A pleasant surprise that I have discovered is that the the random air brake gimmick actually makes the gerwalk reverse thrust pose look a dozen times more aggressive from some angles. I'm starting to think these toys should just be covered in moving wing flaps and brakes if for no other reason than making gerwalk look a lot cooler.

That is one fancy "Hello World" lol

The tornados have a distinct atmospheric form with exposed intakes, come with larger wings, and can vtol, not to mention they were intended to be a massive tech advancement over the starter equipment, so idk how there is a problem there. The supers being jettisoned on a space colony was the real head scratcher IMO. Other than being done for the sake of homage, there's no reason the plane can't fly with those on, especially if they can provide their own thrust. The only explanation is that they were empty and useless anyway.

Wallet is officially worried...

Except the YF-19. That had to come barebones as can be so that it can be mismatched with the YF-21 that followed right after. 🙃 Anyway, once again, out of the kindness of their hearts, Bandai really did toss in another main body with this accessory pack lol. It doesn't seem like they made any improvements at all. That means some of these parts are older than the renewals, since the Tornado parts only got partial updates for that release. I guess I can wait for reviews to see how it fares, since it's Michael's unit that I want. Hopefully they eventually do that. They can do Luca's first while my wallet rests. The 27 on the other hand... gonna have to think on that.

Bandai usually goes radio silent until release, unless there is a delay that sends it into another month. It hasn't been exhibited anywhere afaik, and there doesn't seem to be anything displayed at NYCC thats running right now either. Usually retailers might know exact dates, but this is web exclusive, so resellers are less likely to know better than us.

Maybe if yall hurry up and buy up all the 19s, bandai will see a reason to reprint those fast packs, fold booster, missiles, and arm canon. 🙃 I'm sure they'll throw in another whole main body in the bundle out of kindness because they know how much we love the thing. 🤡😭🤡

That's not entirely fair. To their credit, they recently do seem to have been RMAing or sending replacements directly to individuals in Japan. Both for this and the new 31J revival. It just seems like relailers or maybe even just exporters get second priority. It may still be due to minimal spares. In the case of gunpla, I think they used to even come with little order forms for you to buy spare parts in Japan, so I think there is inventory for replacements. At some point, Bluefin stated doing it for them in NA on and off. IDK if that service is still available now. Long ago, before that was a thing, I even emailed them from overseas and gotten replacements for free before. It was over some long months of correspondence, because they seem to only answer my emails quarterly. But due to some miscommunication, I didn't get everything I needed, and then they stopped responding after that lmao.

Lady M, her knowledge of and pushing of Xaos and NUNS to meddle with the ruins is the big loose end. It's no small deal if they went out of their way to retcon the whole show just to cameo Max and have him expose her as being hella suspicious and a potential foe. And the fact that they dredged up Alto and then tied him the same plot device of those ruins pretty much warrants a straight up sequel IMO. Had they not packed that MV with the movie, it would not be so suspiciously plot relevant. I'm not saying the next show has to be a direct sequel of those two series, but if they are gonna heavy handedly drop such teasers, I think they should really pay those off. I'm fairly certian the deal with HG includes terms of non distrubution of specific OG IP in any form in HG controlled regions, and not just to not include those IP in new works. I'm quite sure ZLive being on Disney means they are in the clear, at least with how vague it was portrayed there. If there are anymore issues, they could just write off Megaroad and related characters as a red herring, and still continue that story. It's not like we know what they had planned.

The issue is that, I don't feel like a story is generally very compelling or immersive if the foregone conclusion from the track record is that the franchise has a promise to always leave a bunch of loose ends with bad unfinished writing. They need to wrap up their old teasers before I can trust them with starting something new. There can only be so many surviving shady factions trying to overthrow NUNS before you start to roll your eyes and wonder where the rest of them are when the next group tries the same stunt. I also don't find it very immersive when stories like MCU or comics leave so many villains hanging that they feel like there are more villians and heroes fighting them than there are civillians to protect. UC Gundam over crowds itself in much the same way, with so many side stories set during the one year war, that there are now more hidden wars and gundams than there are probably number of mobile suits and battles that canonically could have existed during that war. Macross doesn't trap itself like that because it doesn't keep going backwards on its timeline. If that's a pitfall being in Gundam's shadow let it dodge, I'm glad its there, and hope it stays there. Macross has a single story that keeps going forward, so all the valkyrie development lore makes sense, and happens as a consequence of all the implied or glossed over politics. The fold magic and protoculture lore also keeps getting built upon. That's the stuff I'm invested in being explained and why I care about continuity. I'm not bent on having old characters appear. That was just an example of how to wrap things up. But it sounds like what you want to see is bound by the forgone conclusion that the writing will be bad, so you'd rather the franchise trash itself by feeding new fodder into it. That's literally exactly what I don't want the franchise to feed into in my first sentence in this post, and hope they pull themselves out of with full effort.

I'm honestly not fond of getting new characters that might be wimpier with each iteration. If sunrise has freedom to be as detached as they wanted, it's entirely possible we get digimon kiddies in the next one, with holographic furry mascots that summon magic fighter jets, and still claim continuity with the rest of the franchise lmao. From my experience, stories dealing with an established commanding superior you can't trust, makes for a much more intriguing story than just charging at the obvious big bad. I'd rather all the past aces come back, and star in the next series, rather than be mere cameos, and find out Lady M is a giant interdimensional cthulu monster that ate the protoculture, then teaming up to repel her. IMO sequels being hard to get into is a blanket excuse to shut down continuity. It just depends how the new story is introduced and framed.

It seems Absolute Live is on Disney+, so Harmony Gold somehow has no hold over Megaroad-01 or Max himself I do believe it was implied that there was more to Heimdall than just the forces present in the movie. And I originally had Epsilon on my list of loose ends too, but it started to look like I was padding the list with petty stuff so I removed it lol. Actually don't remember the telepathic hive mind being cleared out by Brera, but it's been too long. I also want a more conclusive closure to Alto and the Vajra than just beaming a message made of symbolism, but once again, list was getting long.

This isn't on Satelight's production and marketing schedule though. I doubt Sunrise will copy the same pattern. If that was entirely Kawamori's decision to preview like that in the past, I doubt he is involved enough with this series to call those shots this time. He should currently be busy at the helm of the new Aquarion at Satelight. Really hoping it's Sunrise proper thats doing all the work, with the full unlimited budget treatment, and not heavily subbed out to Sunrise Beyond or other low budget subsidiaries like where most TV gundam series have gone... They can cook for as long as they want if it is at least animated as seriously animated as gundam unicorn and other subseqent big budget OVA/movie releases. And hopefully it's more relevant to existing loose ends and lore, like Lady M, Heimdall, maybe the NUNS politics that Max left behind, the shady group that Grace was part of, etc. IMO we honestly don't need more vaguely introduced conspiracies that won't get tied up by the end.

The fun part is when amazon sells both of those bendy units to the next customer as new. This is apparently not uncommon with stuff like graphic cards, where people swap in lower models, only to be caught by the next customer, because they don't insepct returns and ship them out as new stock. While I don't condone sneakily offloading problems to someone else, both those corportate giants deserve their bad rap out of this lol

Since this thread is alive again, I'd just like to report that I finally played with mine a bit. I accidentally put a considerable amount of force on one of the triangles while it was folded, during transformation, and absolutely nothing happened. 🙃 These revival triangles are hella strong and definitely not made of explodium like CFs I heard so much of. There's more of a possibility that the tips and edges of those triagles can be mushed against it's own folded layer because there are no indications of their intended range of motion, but that is honestly a very minor concern compared to cracking or exploding. Trying to find the magic angle of the bicep for least stress and crookedness in fighter mode, and trying to to close the gerwalk intake extension weren't fun though. Going into battroid, the neck plate spin was real weird, and trying to line the spine's scalloped out spot with the major hinge section was somehow harder than it should be. But overall, I don't think it was as complicated to transform as I heard. Would definitely like to see a teal CF revival down the road. Especially if they made the RFV with dual the wing top fold boosters and tossed in all the big bombs. Bandai could probably even do away with the partsforming RVF brace if they just changed up the spine peg or added an integral adapter. There seems to be a lot of space to hide things between the dorsal panel and legs. A 17 with super parts would be nice too. Don't want to monkey paw this stuff into existence too soon though. Wallet needs to rest 😭

I hope someone figures out a way to change in some bigger custom landing gears that fix the ground clearance, if they can even be removed. I've been thinking of trying to add some layers of tape on the tires, just to see if that's enough for ground clearance while still fitting in the door. At times like these, I wish my had my unit in hand, not on a slow boat, so I don't have to imagine things and talk out of my bum lol.

Realistically, they just need to change the canopy, heat shield, face, and the two belly plates to call it the 22S. That's only all of 5 pieces. Recently, I've noticed there are depictions that differentiate the internal gunpod from the external ones, like in the Macross 30 game. They just slap the external pods as additions under the belly plate bulge that houses the internal ones, so I guess spawning those guns out of nowhere for battroid is not even an issue anymore. Ground clearance shenanigans even without fast pack would be fun to see though. 🤡 If they feel really adventurous, they could throw in the belly missile bay gimmick. Or cut some slots in the wing roots to peg the super parts, and proceed to never release them lol. I've been thinking, those loose wing flaps could also probably be replaced with ones that have pylon mounts that reach forward under the wing, to carry external missiles like in the master file. Not actually counting on bandai to do that, but maybe someone will cook up a mod like that. As for recpetion of this mold, I think some people canceled their orders after hearing about all the quality issues, so there's a few retail units still in stock.