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RavenHawk

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Everything posted by RavenHawk

  1. RavenHawk
    Minmei had character development?
  2. RavenHawk
    I'm pretty those panels are from a different issue, like 5 or more months back. The good new mecha panels are a different artist, I think.
  3. RavenHawk
    Thanks. Yeah, I saw the picture in the posting, and thought "That looks like a Machine Robo DX", but it wasn't until I got it in hand and transformed it that I realized, "Hey, that's Herr Fiend!" Either way, it was a fun little find, and it let me add a Matchbox Cyclone to my shelf without eating into the budget for the (hopefully soon) Yellow Sentinel. Oh, and I think I'm pretty "young" too. I had more Gobots (well, knockoffs even less expensive than the real ones) as a kid, but no DXs (those were approaching Transformers prices back then).
  4. RavenHawk
    As I wait for new MOSPEADA (and Megazone) products, I've been slowly looking around at deals on old items to fill out the collection. I'd just like to say "thank you" to the few folks who still post items on eBay without looking online to see what they are. I just picked up this sweet "Matchbox motorcycle", and it even came with a "Bandai metal car". Perfect condition? Not at all... but for a whopping $5.50 (plus $3.50 shipping), I'll take it.
  5. RavenHawk
    So... they're taking this thing in totally new directions, with increasingly less to do with what is commonly known as "Robotech?" All things considered, that may not be a bad thing... This reminds me a bit of when Furman took over the US Marvel run of Transformers, and started running the stories towards less of a direction of what was previously Transformers, and more as a springboard for his own original (or heavily modified) human characters. Anyone remember the Neo Knights? Furman was readying them to be their own series for when Transformers inevitably got canceled.
  6. RavenHawk
    Their tank mode definitely looks off compared to the lineart. I know it's a boxy design, but theirs looks less... sleek, I guess. Too much legs just folded under it, not really collapsing into place... the gun/cannon looks too small and just sort of sitting on top, instead of partially nested in place, and the, uh, fold-out hover thingies (sorry) look too small too, or at least too small compared to the rest of the lower leg.
  7. RavenHawk
    My only real nitpick here is with their statements about how they listen to the fans. In my VERY LIMITED experience with some of the products that MAAS has put out, while they are very active on social media, they also are convinced that they know best. So, they do "listen" to fans who are very vocally praising them, but input which doesn't line up with what they have already decided upon or which is more critical than glowing seems to get ignored. So, I guess they're a good fit for partnership with HG... (again, limited experience with them, so it might not speak to the specific folks behind this particular project)
  8. RavenHawk
    Didn't realize it was going to last that long...
  9. RavenHawk
    Not to sound out-of-character positive on a series that has been generally very poor, but, based purely on the preview, it doesn't look like Furman is phoning the script in quite as badly as on previous issues (faint praise), and I'm fine with the inclusion on the Invid. This storyline, for me, is completely separate from anything before and, as a Robotech property, it makes sense to link the generations together more closely for the fans.
  10. RavenHawk
    I buy a lot of stuff from Japan and China through eBay, and my experience with these types of posts (relatively low seller ratings, prices too good to be true) is that they either end up canceling the orders, or you just don't get what you ordered. You wait 2 months for the packet to arrive, then it doesn't, the seller doesn't respond to emails, eBay won't do anything because it's been too long, and you're stuck with PayPal. PayPal refunds you the money, but you've lost a couple months of time, the prices have gone up meanwhile, and, oh yeah, since it's been so long, you can no longer leave the seller a negative review (i.e. an 87.9% rating would actually be like 50% if people were able to leave reviews by the time they knew for sure there was an issue). Personally, I only deal with sellers who have about 95% or who are very responsive to initial questions about the item. I've had a lot of good experiences, I've gotten some fantastic deals, but also been soured by some negative ones.
  11. RavenHawk
    I saw that too, but I don't think I really looked closely at it before. I just assumed it was one of those "Here are parts exposed and flaps open" kind of images they do to make things look more realistic (like the MOSPEADA image with all of the made up internals, or lots of scifi manuals do showing the insides of spaceships). Since we have no new MZ23 stuff to report, I thought I'd post a bit about the PS3 game, which I recently picked up for a very fair price. I got the limited Japan-only "international edition." Instead of just a PS3 game case, it comes in a box: Inside, you have the standard game case: But the fun is inside of this additional box inside: First, we have a DVD: It's region encoded, so I haven't been able to watch it yet. (I thought I could play the game and watch the DVD on my son's PS3, but it turns out that his is broken and he had moved on to the PS4 already, so no backwards compatibility or region-free watching). My understanding is that this is the version of MZ23 Part II that was created as an educational video to teach Japanese how to speak English. It uses the Harmony Gold Robotech voice actors for the dubbing. It also supposedly includes the ending from Part I that had new material created for the Robotech Movie, so it's sort of a Robotech-ized MS23, I suppose. Finally, the box also contains a special book: The book contains a lot of images of the 3d models used in the game: As well as character designs: Interestingly, it also contained some original Artmic artwork/design sketches which, offhand, I don't remember seeing in other books: I've seen this out there for over $100, and I don't think it's worth that. However, if you're patient and wait for one of the decent deals (I paid around $30), then I think most people will be happy to add it to their collection.
  12. RavenHawk
    It's super fiddly. It won't stay together in bike mode or robot mode. I have it attached to a stand from a different model kit right now... and dang but it looks gorgeous, as long as you don't touch it. That said, I'm still going to reiterate what I said before: The more I transform it, the more fun it is. It has really grown on me. If it just had leg/knee/ankle/heel joints that stayed in place in robot mode, and the legs stayed in place in bike mode, it would be fantastic, in my opinion. But I do like the gifs.
  13. RavenHawk
    I thoroughly enjoyed Aldnoah.Zero, and kept it on my watch list on Netflix to rewatch it again (probably in a month or so). First of all, I generally like these types of scifi shows. Second, I enjoy ones that are more "real" robot. What I really liked about it, though, is where the protagonist doesn't just have some special powers (arguably), but is a thinking person. The victories (whether realistic or not) or though thinking through the problem and trying to find design flaws or strategic advantages.
  14. RavenHawk
    Now you have me all excited for 1.25" Cyclones. (FYI, maybe it's the kid in me who grew up on G.I. Joe, but I always like 1:18ish for anything that has a figure to go along with it)
  15. RavenHawk
    Are you suggesting that being an officially licensed Robotech toy, meeting Tommy Yune's exacting standards, isn't enough for you? Shame on you, sir! Shame, I say!
  16. RavenHawk
    I think you got the correct answer, but your math was wrong. My understanding is that the Robotech store is literally just Steve, where he does all of the orders, packaging, and shipping. I'd say that equals 3/4 of a qualified person. Tommy, at his job... maybe 1/4 of a qualified person... maybe...
  17. RavenHawk
    I got two sets: one in army green, one in dark gray. They look very different in photos, but aren't all that different in person. All in all, I'm very happy with them. They look great, and have a ton of customization that you can do. Unfortunately, they're seriously overpriced.
  18. RavenHawk
    They did a Kickstarter for the Mayhem Mekanics figures, but I don't recall there being any issues.
  19. RavenHawk
    These are the ones I was referring to. Basically big (like 12" or so) mech figures and vehicles, plus solider figures (did't get any of those), where everything can be disassembled and reassembled into armor and weapons.
  20. RavenHawk
    This is an MZ23 thread, but just to finish off the recent tangent on BG 2040, I want to say that I just finished rewatching/binging it, and I think it held up better than I remembered. Very very different from the original, obviously, and went slightly metaphysical towards the last couple episodes, but I enjoyed it and thought the ending was fitting.
  21. RavenHawk
    I've been curious about these. they look sort of like mini JoyToy figures (like the Tekui), which I picked up a couple overpriced sets of.
  22. RavenHawk
    My opinion (and I think I may be somewhat echoing what others have said) is that I want to see the character development and a well-done plot. If a love interest is not important to a character's motivations or to the plot, then it doesn't need to be focused on. So-and-so used to have a girlfriend. Shiro, who seemed like he would end up being the loner, eventually found love and got married. Gotcha. That's all that was needed. It doesn't matter whether those relationships were heterosexual or homosexual; they did not define the characters or their actions. So, I think they were fine being shown in the way that they were.
  23. RavenHawk
    Well, as stated before, I do like 2040. I think calling it a piece of trash is excessive, but hey, we all clearly have very different tastes. Is it one of my favorites? Absolutely not... but I don't think it's fine. It has the luxury of taking its time with character development and backstories more than the original did, and I think a lot of their choices (though not all) make sense. It is stylistically (both story-telling wise and visually) very much a product of the late '90s/early '00s. As such, it doesn't have the nostalgia appeal of the original a decade before it, and doesn't have a lot of the improvements of anime from the last decade. I rewatch all of the Aramaki-verse somewhat regularly, with MOSPEADA, the original Bubblegum Crisis, Bubblegum Crash, and Viper's Creed probably once a year+, and the Megazone OAVs, Bubblegum Crisis 2040, and the other BGC spin-offs once every 2+ years. My rankings from back in March of last year were: 1) Genesis Climber MOSPEADA 2) Bubblegum Crisis 3) Bubblegum Crash 4) Viper's Creed 5) BGC Tokyo 2040 6) Megazone 23 7) remaining BGC spin-offs However, I just recently rewatched the MZ23 OAVs and, for whatever reason, enjoyed them more than I used to... so that might have moved up higher on my list now. Out of all of these, I haven't rewatched 2040 in by FAR the longest, so this conversation has inspired me to grab out my DVD set and I'll rewatch the series over the next week or so (there's a lot of new-to-me stuff in my Netflix queue also tempting me). We can compare notes and see how it holds up with our 2019 eyes. BTW, I did rewatch ep. 1 late last night: I had forgotten that Aramaki was credited with not just the mechanical designs for this show, but also with the updates to the hardsuits.
  24. RavenHawk
    While I absolutely respect the engineering and design work that went into this, and the end result is gorgeous in both modes, it really just seems like complicating a transformation beyond the point of it being enjoyable. Did someone challenge the designer to try to come up with an OP that would require 842 dowel pins to transform? Te last time I genuinely collected Transformers was during Transformers: Prime. After a few years of movie-verse toy drudgery, that line really made me appreciate transformations that were fun to do. Again, it looks gorgeous, it looks impressive, and maybe it needs to be that complicated in order to look so good in both modes, but it just doesn't look fun to me.
  25. RavenHawk
    I just finished my second viewing of the whole series (once dubbed, once subbed). Definitely prefer the subbed one by quite a lot. Overall, really enjoyed it. The first half was fine, though a little too monster-of-the-week type of setup, but I really liked the second half a lot, and it built on the groundwork that had been set up in pretty much all of the previous episodes. Very nice, satisfying ending, too. Now I just wish there were some model kits to go along with it...
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