PointBlankSniper

If duping distributors and retailers, and then offloading unwanted stock to them is bandai's main businiess, that would make perfect sense. At this point, bandai has a much stronger pattern of not acting in favor of their primary objective. I'm still waiting to see how they justify spending like a billion to make their meta verse, which is just a barebones and unoptimized copy of vrchat, and using it as a link to p-bandai's site lmao. I think according to background lore, the 31A is the result of the hypernova project, where Yang Neuman was invovled to correct his old mistake of making a super plane for a special pilot, This time, its design for the grunts, so its supposedly on track as the new CF unit of NUNS, to replace the 171. That mean's there's a chance 31A will be literal fodder in the next series. That may give it an imminent chance at rerelease. We just have to hope sunrise doesn't drag the next series' production timeline out to 2041, or reinvent the lore entirely 🙃

Don't know how low that is, but it's actually 24500 yen, with free shipping at least to your proxy, on amazon jp right now. lol

I've been looking around for a comparison to the old one. Seems this is the only one. I've seen a couple other photos with it posed against the box, so it seems like the canopy is definitely clearer than what is shown on the box art. I can make out the fact that Hayate has painted eyes looking through it. Other than that, there is only a hand full of posts about it on JP twitter that aren't retailer ads. A couple were first time collectors or people that missed out on Web exclusive super packs. One of them had to RMA it because one of the arms somehow couldn't transform, and has already gotten it back fixed. One post said Yodobashi Camera has already price cut it. I just looked it up myself, seems to be 28,400 yen https://www.yodobashi.com/product/100000001008466909/ Personally, I was hoping they took the AX's wing hinge with the pylon jacks to make it compatible with the Lil Drakens without the funny adapters, or just to up the modular fun factor in general, but the photos I saw confirmed that it didn't happen. Looks like this was a very meh release even in Japan. Will be interesting to see how Bandai treats the rest of the Seigfrieds.

As with anything that has finite production runs, the price only goes up with the yellowing. Have you seen gundam build metaverse? Or Kyoukai Senki? They are a profound experience, but in the opposite way of what you are thinking. It's possible that the survival of the Macross brand is at risk in these new hands lol.

I don't think it's that low or niche. There are no numbers, but I'm sure they at least ship by palettes and container, enough to warrant mass production. But I also don't think Disney will be that big a boost. Kid's aren't gonna watch crunchy old anime, nor are western casuals gonna care about old japanese music or idol shows. When it comes to toys, complex transformations and massive price tags are gonna put off the kiddies and casual adults too. Anyway, the latest VF-31J has been released to no fanfare, or had any reviews, and has been readily in stock for weeks now. Meanwhile the older release is still clogged up in the second hand market.

Nothing has been mentioned at all. Probably just people panic selling because Hayate got a revival. But said revival also isn't selling very well, so that may lower the chances of the rest of the line returning, because bandai often has their head in their bums and takes hints from sales figures of products with no demand because of existing over supply. Imma be sad if they don't redeem themselves with Arad's super parts and jump straight into the armored parts instead though.

That Fire Valkyrie display is totally typical bandai vaporware lol. There's no sign that it's actually a project in motion. I'm not big on the valkyrie itself, especially the mouth. But together with the sound booster, it makes for a cool piece. Not sure I can stomach the price of that though, or the way bandai may or may not make the accessory at all.... I definitely welcome it getting us closer to a Blazer Valkyrie though. That one is extra different from the YF-19 and has a cool head, so I can justify wanting another 19 by that. 😁

Actually kind of curious to see if they will milk the exact same mold some more, along with the head design, to pump out some 31J kais, since that one is kind of written out of canon now. That could be one way to retcon their Delta revivals and start releasing missiles for everyone lol.

I personally like they orange one more. The main color covers more of the plane and makes it less monochrome looking. Maybe the purple one would grow on me if I could see it in a different lighting that makes the gray parts pop out against the black. If they really wanted to milk the molds, I think there are ways to do it without the game. They could just promote it in an SRW game for example. Or pull off a random year anniversary and give it a one shot 5 page eplilogue manga or a minute of animation. If not, they could always just cameo it with Leon in the next series. Isamu only needed 2 seconds of screen time to make a comeback after all lmao.

Yeah, it's readily in stock at hobby search right now. Maybe that will be an incentive for bandai to put the missiles back in if they continue with the line. But it also discourages them from continuing the line and finally reaching Arad and Chuck, to hopefully include their super packs this time around lol. I wonder if anyone will review this to check for differences.

With reworked built in braces. From my understanding, it barely even needed the extra braces, so some tiny internal additions should be enough. And then a less prone to yellow plastic or finish. That or do the two other colors that they are definitely never gonna do lol

For my specific order with YF-21 and a master grade kit, It was 3700 yen for surface VS 8100-9900 yen for all the other air and courier options. Literally less than half the price. In this case, YYK is covering half the shipping fees because of delays, so I'm paying less than a quarter compared to the other options had things gone normally. 😃 For shipping to my region, air small packet is usually the cheapest, starting around 1500 yen I think. Surface parcel is the second cheapest, starting around 3000 yen but starts at a much higher weight capacity and jumps in larger incriments. So at some point between the 3-4k yen range, small packet and parcel leap frog each other in best value, until parcel just wins out in large weight incriments of low price jumps. From what I recall, EMS and couriers usually start around the 5-7k yen range for shipments in that range where the other two are still leap frogging. On top of that, post office is easier for me to reach to pick up if I miss the delivery and they don't want to drop it off. They handle packages with more care too. Then there's an enigmatic import tax system that is somehow in my favor half the time. Couriers on the other hand will just pretend to deliver and never show up, forcing me to show up at their facility in the middle of nowhere, to pay their inflated mandatory brokerage fees, even on items with values low enough to be exempt from import taxes, before I can pick up,

The VF-1 is in a diffeent scale from the rest of the line. Bandai probably designed things to be incompatible on purpuse, just to stop people from mixing accesories of mismatched scales lol.

They actually responded now. It's been the fastest in the past two months lol Anyway, I paid and got a tacking number now, so it seems like things are finally moving along for me. Now to wait for the slow boat...

Everyone else seems to have had quick responses from them. Idk why it seems like it's just me getting pulled and thrown into non regular response proceedures. I put in the surface request on top of the original shipping confirmation, and haven't heard back for either, so I assume I'm in for another month long reply loop again. I think it's been over two months since the thing released, of course there's no hurry. 🙃 Tbf, I go for slow shipping through national posts whenever possible. They tend to do a better job for the lesser cost and more convenient for me to pick up from, than expensive couriers with their additional brokerage extortion fees around here.

Ah yes, good old list of dead gunpla projects Bandai has probably sent to the combustible trash. There was MG Age-3, Age-FX and GN-X IV. Then there's MG Gafran, that google can't even find records of ever existing. Probably nobody remembers that thing anymore, but I actually have photos of its hard to see side profile from reaching my camera over the rope and shooting from the side of the frosted display lol.

If those were worth a thing to Bandai, we'd be in a parallel timeline where we would have long since had a properly designed DX Wright Immelman's VF-22 that led to a YF-21 shortly after, instead of w/e we finally got this year. Kind of like how 2 seconds of an Isamu cameo got us the 19. But I guess Hayate, Mirage, and Wright themselves aren't cameos, so the cameo valks they used hold a lot less weight to Bandai...

Bamco published Macross 30, so it's kind of a reverse case where Bandai just stuffed in some paint jobs for themselves to use for recycling DX molds and did a special one off for the new lead mech. It doesn't seem like anyone else has bothered to borrow those designs. I can imagine Bandai being afraid of the risks of producing toys for anything else hidden deep inside the niche game that isn't at least attached to famous cameos. Max's YF-29 is more canon than the whole Delta TV series... It arguably symbolically carries all of Delta canon and paves way to the next series lol. Idk about the others, but they sound like something Bandai cooked up for their toy and not designs borrowed from a third party magazine.

Well, tbf, all that stuff is kind of non canon or outsourced designs. Bandai pretty much only deals in mainstream canon when it's not gundams. Even then, they won't even complete a line up of all the mechs from any specific gundam show. Even one offs for very popular designs from their own side stories is a big maybe at best. There's also weird stories of japanese copyright issues too. A game studio or magazine, or even just a seperate department of the same company, could tangle up IP ownership and stop someone else from using a design somewhere down the line. Even anime cannot legally use their own titles after a season ends. That's where you get weird titles with extra exclamation marks or random new wording when a new season comes out. Gintama for example, with all the seasons full of punctuation marks in their titiles, had to even be "moved to a whole new animation studio" in name at some point, because of strange legalities. They had to move from Sunrise to Bandai Namco Pictures, just to make a sequel with the exact same staff. Both studios are still just under Bandai Namco, so none of this makes sense to the average sane person. Gundam sentinel for example is supposedly written and therefore owned by a magazine. So everytime the ExS Gundam is in a game, the pilot has to be faceless, because Bandai has no rights to him. I'm sure Hasegawa is willing to jump through all sorts of funny hoops to get a niche model kit out, but Bandai is too big a boat to expect navigating such niche matters for IP that isn't even their own, as much as I'd like to see them do it.

That one is basically just a YF-19, which I think probably could only reuse a quarter of the molds. Other than arms, chest, and spine, everything is different between the YF and VF. It's probably the reason why the DXs haven't been pumped out like brain dead repaints.

Thanks. Now I'm tempted to ask for it, but the risk of extending this loop of multi month correspondence... I wonder if I can intercept my own email, since they check email in large batches at a time it seems. Maybe I'll ask anyway, if they haven't magically responded very fast this time.

It seems crying about it here has magically worked. YYK finally responded saying they are very understaffed while having a big boom in business. Shipping fees look real hefty with no surface option, but they have offered to cover half of it to compensate for all the delays in correspondence. Now to wait for them to actually charge me and reach the point of sending the box out... Let me keep on crying till we get to that point. 😭 Just for reference, anyone know if YYK normally offers slow boat shipping at all? They quoted 8k-9k yen (18k DHL doesn't count, wtf) for the various shipping methods, at the weight of 3000g. It should include the YF-21 and a master grade gunpla. Do those numbers sound right? I would think that is within the weight limit for surface shipping, but it doesn't seem like they offer that service at all.

Nice trainer colors. Totally forgot about the recessed hangers with glass floors in Delta. Dunno where the scuff is, so it's just immersive and good work in my eyes.

Removing the canopy sensors and painting the other ones in darker colors really gets rid of the barnacle infestation look imo GL doing the panels lines. It looks and sounds like insanity lol, but I'm sure it will make the details pop.

I really didn't want to necro this after weeks of quiet with nothing meaningful to add, but since it's been resurrected anyway, I'll just cry here. I really don't know what's going on with YYK. After coming back with a good antenna from their photo inspection, it took multiple ways of contacting them for 3 weeks for a reply after I asked for secondary inspections, since I asked for something stupid like open it up to check for double shoulders. When they finally answered, they went above and beyond and actually half transformed the thing more than neccessary because of iffy understanding of the toy and my request. But ultimately, I got to inspect the shoulders and they were fine. I think I've vaguely mentioned this much along the way on this thread. Since that's been done, I replied to go ahead and ship my order, which includes the 21 and a P-bandai gunpla kit. It's been nearly another 5 weeks since then. I even gave them the benefit of "August holidays in Japan" before I even tried to contact them again for a couple more times in the last two weeks. Even a local store has finally got the YF-21 in stock without too ridiculous of a markup. In fact it might even be about the same price or cheaper after accounting for unpredictable shipping fees and import taxes... I'd hate to escalate things after they've done so much extra work, and get an even more unresponsive mess while potentially losing out on my p-bandai kit or money... I also have my Ozma revival order placed with them too... Here's to hoping crying about it here will just magically make things move along again soon... 😭