YFMATO-21

I find this hilarious! Makes total sense now. Just a hired gun doing a job...

Exactly. Being able to follow the line art is like icing on the cake. But if the cake itself sucks, who cares about the icing? (cake = a nice looking battroid, fighter, gerwalk) Besides which, I'm suggesting that the position of the legs (bent into the nacelle space) would be only for the fighter mode - in other words, it would be hidden by the belly panels anyway, so technically it would still look like the line art. Then, for delimiter, you'd remove the legs completely, and you could have a sliding panel or folding doors (similar to the front landing gear folding panels) to cover up the hollowed out nacelle space. So you could actually get delimiter to look like the line art as well. The only line art breaking would be the knowledge that the legs weren't tucked away according to the line art rules during fighter.

No panels removed, it was just a hideous first attempt at the YF-21. But that aside, if you retain the idea of forward-oriented legs from the 1/72 1st edition and transfer it to the Bandai DX, but then allow the legs to bend into the larger nacelle cavity, I see that as a solution to the problem of the currently thicc fighter mode tor the Bandai DX...

Here's a pic of the 1/72 1st edition (bottom). You can see the different leg orientation. Now just have the legs bend at the knee, upward into the nacelles

I see your point (and thanks for the images!), however I see a few things that would help: 1) the nacelles on the new Bandai DX design are massive - far larger than the Yamato nacelles, lots of potential cavity space to fit legs/ankles (not in their entirety of course, but enough to allow for a more trim fighter mode); 2) the legs could be oriented straight-on and bend upwards into the nacelle cavity (using the actual knee joint, or even an extra joint): The very first version of the 1/72 Yamato Yf-21 had the legs oriented in the straight-on position I believe, not rotated inwards/more flat, as per the 1/60 Yammy (been awhile since I transformed the first 1/72 version); they didn't bend into the nacelles of course, instead they just caused a bulkier fighter mode with a hefty belly; they issued an update to the 1/72 which finally had the legs oriented "flat", allowing for a thinner fighter profile; Bandai could go with the original 1/72 leg orientation and have the knees bend upwards into the new (larger) nacelles, not completely, but enough to thin out the belly of the plane; this would solve the "centerline" issue you brought up, as the leg thickness would be further away from centerline when the legs are oriented forward; 3) the new trick of folding the feet into the ankles would help out as well, reducing the amount of volume that would have to go into the nacelles.

And just to clarify; if the hinge points for the platform were moved higher up, then the platform itself would be less wide (in terms of the distance between the backpack and the forward fuselage), because the "height" of the hinge is what would define its width.

New to the boards, but have been following this for awhile (fwiw I own all versions of the Yamato YF-21s, including the 2x 1/72 versions and the 1/60). This has been touched on before, but I just wanted throw my hat in the ring; from what I can gather, the ONLY reason for the massive "platform" separating the backpack is to allow for the wings to fold in at an angle (i.e., 15 degrees or so). If the wings could fold flat, then the backpack could be brought in closer very easily, by simply moving the hinge points for the "platform" higher up along the backpack and the corresponding point on the forward fuselage. This is all completely ridiculous as there appears to be no reason why the wings can't be adjusted to fold flat (similar to the platform, one can simply adjust the hinge locations). I'm flabbergasted by this design. Also, I can't recall if this was brought up earlier in the discussion, but why not just adjust the 1/60 Yamato design so that larger ankles can fit into hollowed-out engine nacelles?? This would provide the best of both worlds: the beautifully slim fighter profile of the 1/60 Yammy, and the large ankles of the current version. I see no reason why they can't use all that extra space in the nacelles just staring the designers in the face. And yes that would mean delimiter mode would be impacted, as the hollowed out nacelles would be visible in that mode, however you could just have a sliding mechanism to cover it up, or alternatively, folding panels similar to those for the landing gear, except they would fold into the nacelle space when the ankles were slotted in, and fold closed when in delimiter mode. Anyway just my two cents. Enjoying the conversation (and I do have it on preorder... just in case I'm surprised by how it looks in person)