Jolly Rogers

Hey Christopher, hopeyour move went smoothly. Did you ever get a chance to put together the 1/100 Powered GM conversion kit?

SEED is gonna be on Cartoon Network next month and the R1 DVDs should be out soon. Just wait and it'll be out sooner than you know.

Zzzz... Too similar to the VHS box set that came out a couple of years ago (silver and gold tone for the 2 different formats). Personally I think any of the proposed designs were better than this.

Hehehe, those crazy bootleggers can slap any $h!t on a DVD and otaku fanboys will eat them up. Those animated cut scenes way too brief and don't tell any story out of the game's context, and the animation quality is not even halfway decent. In some scenes they literally used only 1 cel (still frame) and the camera simply pans over from one side to the other. I pity the fool who pays money for it.

Hmm, I expected 1/2 scale to be bigger than that...

The glare in the 1st page made some of the text illegible...

Machines have been playing music for years - drums, programmed keyboard, etc. With robotics, just throw in random variances to mimic the imprecise humanness and you can fool untrained ears.

That's funny... Sony's QRIO recently conducted an orchestra. Toyota's response was a robot that plays in one? In related news, Toyota is named as a defendant by Wayne Bobbit. The lawsuit alleges Toyota's product caused an old injury of Bobbit's to re-occur. The plaintiff is asking millions in physical pain and suffering.

When I said color molding it meant multiple colors on the same runner or even the same part - like the F91/SF91 and later kits. The term does not apply when the entire runner of parts are molded in the same color, the way the 1/144 Zeta Plus kit was done. The solid lines represent the parts that need to be glued together. While the kit snaps together for the most part, I wouldn't claim it is a snap-fit kit when cement is required.

The first kit (horizontal box with grey MS) is the 1/144 Zeta Plus released in the mid to late 1980s. IIRC it requires cememnt because the kit was designed before the days of System Injection, so no color molding and parts do not snap together. The good thing is it transforms. The MSRP of the kit is 1,000 yen (roughly 9 bucks). You might be able to get 15 bucks for it, but with the release of the 1/100 MG version, this kit has lost some of the appeal it once had. THe second kit (Ga-Zowmn) is from ZZ Gundam and came out a little before the first kit. Same story - no color molding, not snap-fit kit. MSRP was 600 yen, but if you can find a ZZ fan you might be able to get way more than 5 bucks for it, since this design never got any new kit treatment and this old kit doesn't get reissued often.

Actually, a rental edition was released on VHS a few years after the LD boxes came out. The box art used the same ones seen on the LD sleeves.

speaking of that. follow this link Hahaha, great find. Kawaii!

Don't forget to sign up with their points program so you earn points with each purchase that can be used later for purchases.

Mmmokay, too much info there... Unless you're talking about door knobs.

I doubt the Japanese would import it anyway, since Sunrise refused (and is still refusing) to turn over the Japanese language tracks to Bandai America. True, they just felt like adding insult to injury. It's not like Yahoo Japan auctions isn't already flooded with HK bootleg Gundam DVDs... people who reverse import US Gundam DVDs won't make any money since the cost is way higher than the HK boots.

You can always tell them off with the classic line: "He who dies with the most toys wins. I WIN!" Bwahahahahaha!

I've ordered from them a lot in the past. More reliable than HLJ - faster e-mail replies, and they never screwed up my order. They even include a printout of your invoice/receipt in your order and wrap each kit carefully in a plastic bag. You definitely get more for what you pay for, which is below the MSRP HLJ usually charges people. Highly recommended. Order with confidence. If you are looking for larger/heavier kits, may I suggest Best 1 Hobby. They ship from the US so the savings on shipping often justifies the price, which is only slightly higher than the yen MSRP.

The episode was allegedly cut per the request of Yoshiyuki Tomino, director and creator of the original series, when he came over to supervise the English dub. I would take that with a grain of salt, however. Bandai America tends to blame him for a lot of things, yet that episode was never removed in the Japanese releases of the TV series. The episode in question, while not part of the story's main plot, involves themes central to Tomino's Gundam - the effect of war on children, particularly orphans, and what adults can and should do to address the situation. For him to change his mind some 20 years later and toss that out of window just doesn't make any sense, considering this issue is close to his heart (Tomino himself grew up in post-WWII Japan surrounded by war orphans, and this theme is very prevalent in almost all his shows, from the earliest works like Triton of the Sea, Zambot 3 to later shows like Turn-A Gundam). Bandai America also made a lot of questionable sound effects substitution (for example, when the beam rifle fires, it sounds like a shell-firing gun instead, and the trademark Zaku II movement sound now sounds like the chain links from an amusement park ride) that I seriously doubt would have been approved by Tomino. They basically ruined the DVD release so Japanese fans would be turned off enough to not import the US version back home.

I bought one that transformed into a scooter off eBay back in the late 1990s. It was released way after I was collecting them when I was a kid. It was weird seeing the Bandai trademark on the box instead of Popy.

No need to get all hostile. I don't think Ali used that kind of tone with you. Here's 50 bucks. Go get laid. Trust me, it helps.

I bought some of the earliest Machine Robo toys released by Popy when I was little. Each toy would come with a transformation bookleft (more like a long sheet that's folded into a mini-booklet) that also includes a comic strip featuring the toy you just bought, along with a designer credit listing the name and age of the mecha's designer. Many of them were as young as 6.

The remarkable thing about these toys is that they were all created from designs submitted by Japanese school children.

Oops, I don't know how I left out The 08th MS Team in my list. It's out as an OVA series and the movie "Miller's Report" on DVD. I am not sure if "Last Resort" was included in the US release of the OVA DVD though. Turn-A Gundam is supposed to be the last U.C., although so much time has passed they don't use UC calendar system anymore and they half-heartedly incorporated all the silly stuff from G, Wing, etc. into one universe via flashback.

"Doug, lay off the juice." " It'th not juithe. It'th a protein thake."

It's OK RC, we all know you play for the other team.