Shaorin

i never answered you... as you had not asked me a question... until now. anyway... i consider Mikuru-chan the "ultimate" Moe Anime lady myself, but to many/most Anime fans out there, she is rather outclassed by today's standards. so, when i claimed her "penultimate" i was merely being conservative, in my grand sweeping assertions, for the sake of diplomacy...

indeed you can. think what you may, but IRL, i'm actually NOT some random 29-come-30 (in JAN.) year-old man, but actually a very attractive 17 year old, terra-cotta-haired young woman with big sweet doey Moe eyes...

i'd consider it singularly ugly in any of it's modes, myself. i'll stick to the VF-5000B "Star Mirage" thanks kindly...

she's the ultimate epitome of Moe, no question about that, but, more importantly, shes also a sweet, loving, caring Angel of a woman. she only gets better by the time of her older self, when she finally learns how to be self-confidant. i could easily imagine her choosing a medical doctorate of some sort for her career, she just strikes me as that sort of a loving, caring person...

just listen to the original Japanese SDFM opening theme; "MAW-KUU-LOSS!! MAW-KUU-LOSS!!" then Romanize it for for native english speakers; "MAWCK-CROSS" and there you pretty much have it. myself, i personally prefer; "MACK-CROSS" as that is how i've grown up with it always hearing it pronounced that way in english language dubs...

well, think about TUPPERWARE, particularly from the 1970's production runs, which can still be readily found at your local thrift to this very day; this stuff is going on 40+ years old now, mostly made of the same type of plastic, from one end of the line to the other, and can regularly be found, to this very day, in very much like-new condition, with no obvious signs of chemical breakdown. if there is one plastic product out there that proves beyond question that plastics CAN, IN FACT, be made to last decades, if not longer, then is is most definitely TUPPERWARE...

Nonsense. i have plenty of PVC Anime figurines that are now 5, 10, and even more than ten years old by now, and none of them show any signs of chemical breakdown to date. hell, my MegaHouse Haruhi Suzumiya Mikuru Asahina 10" doll was made in 2007, from PVC, ABS and POM. that makes her going on five years old, come next year. i just took this photo; does it really look at all like she's even beginning to chemically disintegrate? http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/My%20Little%20Mikuru/SweetAngelMikuru2.jpg the name of our woes here can be contracted into two letters; Q.C. Quality Control. YAMATO was once able to keep costs down by employing a low-grade chinese factory to produce their products, a factory with obviously low employee skill standards, and low general standards for the quality of their work. raw plastic base chemistry was often poorly and amateurishly implemented, entire stages of parts manufacture and product assembly were often lazily and incompetently carried out, and Q.C. inspection on all stages of production, right on through to the final finished product, were quite obviously minimal to non-existent. today, YAMATO, as a corporation, as grown immensely beyond what they were in their early years, and as such, employs a completely different factory, with operating standards on a completely different plateau then the bare-bones, elementary level factory they once did business with. unfortunately, as would be expected, this current contractor factory appears to charge a solid premium for their services, which gets rather thoroughly passed along to us MACROSS consumers. sadly, this, compounded with the current state of the world economy, means future YAMATO Valk products priced well above what a large segment of us western MACROSS fans seem to be prepared to pay. sad to say, but it seems that the MACROSS Valk "Gravy Train" is now over for many of us...

"I KNEW YOU'D SAY THAT..." QFT, man...

Yes. very much like my little sweetie♥ Mikuru-chan, in fact... the genre has basically been around, in one form or another, since around the early 1980's or so. possibly farther on back. vintage Moe is perhaps a little harder to single out, as it generally isn't nearly as "grossly idealized" as in today's standards...

mehh, dislike what you want. at least Japan is a place where a male can love cute things, and not be instantly labeled, at best, "Gay" or at worst, a "Pedo" for it. us "God-Blessed Americans" could stand to learn a thing or three from you Japanese, about love, tenderness, and appreciating the finer things in life, for starters... you know, i would not be half surprised, myself...

there is. i'm just not into gaming on the go, or gaming on a 2x4inch dia. display...

i'll look into that. hopefully i can still find a copy at a reasonable price... one word; BULLS$#T.

this is the version i'd be the most interested in having, though at the $300+ USD that YAMATO would likely charge, i just don't know how i'd ever manage one;

believe you me, i've been doing just exactly that for a LONG time now, with the ACTUAL softs for the ACTUAL consoles, no less. remember. it has ONLY been about a month/month1/2 now since i bought my VERY FIRST PS3. i still have plenty to discover with retro gaming, so i'm well taken care of there. i just thought i'd FINALLY go ahead and catch up with modern times with a PS3. i've already owned a Wii for years now, though it has never been of much personal use to me at all, as it has proven to be more a family console than much of anything else. the real problem, how i personally see it, is that the few games out there in the U.S. market available for the PS3 to date, that actually have appeared to at least partially match my personal tastes, and don't make me out-and-out blanch at first sight, have all, for the most part, rather turned out to be pretty much all flash, and very little substance indeed. things do not seem to headed any other direction but for the worse in these regards, so i am simply going to have to come to terms with the fact that this seems to be the immutable nature of the modern VG industry, and that it simply is not at all for me...

actually, that went more like "i thought you were made of sterner stuff" during PRIME and MEGATRON's final clash in the movie...

WATCH 4:30 to 4:40;

oh, i'm into gaming alright... VINTAGE gaming. i've made my old NINTENDO SNES and SEGA GENESIS and SATURN all region free, and am having a blast not only replacing the U.S. copies of all the favorite games of my youth with their JPN originals, but also greatly enjoying discovering japanese market-only gems, many of which i never even knew existed. as far as modern gaming is concerned, it is what it now is, and for the most part, simply isn't for me... that MAY be true from a purely technical and gameplay oriented standpoint, but for everything else, western game design will NEVER surpass japanese IMHO. if i am to waste 20/40+ hours of my life trudging through an RPG, then i want it to be populated with (hopefully) engaging characters that are at the very least moderately Anime-styled. i simply DO NOT believe in this whole "we have moved long past the age of silly Anime-styled RPG characters" crap that is so prevalent in today's VG development industry. just because the PS3, for example, is capable of startlingly near-photo realistic graphics doesn't automatically necisarrily mean that EVERY SINGLE DAMNED VG these days designed for markets beyond that of the pre-teen ABSOLUTELY HAS to be BRUTALLY REALISTIC. in sum, what Japanese VG developers these days need to do is stop letting western developers rule the damned roost all the damned time these days, with their unholy damned "Gritty" game softs, and start remembering the past a bit and drawing from it to make a new renaissance of neo-classic JRPGs that look and feel like an ideal balance state of the art and the classic, and play like the very best of what the past had to offer, and not like your atypical minimalistic Dating-Sim or Eroge game. in essence, us JRPG enthusiasts need more "STAR OCEAN III" in modern efforts, and less "Shuffle" and "Fate/stay night" i'm all for dating, and especially marriage elements in a JRPG, but when modern dev. studios start to borrow wholesale from the game genres that routinely feature those gameplay elements, then we are invariably left with minimalist, no-talent product such as these ultimately dissatisfying, poor quality titles that are commonly being passed for JRPGs today...

don't like FPSes, don't like SPORTS titles, now what exactly does that leave me with in this day and age?

guess what? all the PS3 games i have so far; * Atelier Rorona * Atelier Totori * Ar Tonelico III (Quga) * METAL GEAR SOLID IV * Record of ARGAREST War ZERO * Trinity Universe and the only one that i have truly, actively ENJOYED so far? "Tri Uni" (Trinity Universe) all the others (with the exception of MGS4) seem so vapid and poorly made. MGS4 is a solid game overall, but is also SO downbeat and depressing that it that it get's hard to stomach real fast. "Tri Uni" is the only one so far to actually have halfway inspired and entertaining scriptwriting 1/4th of the time. the on-screen chara art for the girls all have such adorable and luscious little faces, too. chara design on the whole is quite nice, IMHO. not the best i've ever seen, hardly what i'd consider unappealing. gameplay is merely OKAY, though. NOTHING special... Ehhh, it's just all so disappointing to me that my first few PS3 titles are all so generally underwhelming. so much so, on a personal level, that even an occasionally inspired underachiever such as "Tri Uni" manages to come out on top, even with the presence in my library of a much lauded instant classic such as MGS 4. i'll tell you one thing; i definitely recall being WAY more "Wowed" by my first few PS2 titles nearly ten years ago...

ah!! "PLUM" !! thanks for the "ASSAULT SUIT LEYNOS" AS-5E3 kit, guys!! too bad the damn thing has such a poor ball joint design; i have a hell of a time getting the damned arms to stay put in a pose, as the shoulder ball joints are just too damned loose. something i need to get around to working on;

yeah, and i'm ashamed to admit that i was very much one of them. in retrospect, it is most striking indeed just how BAD those demo stills were. i got exited again in 2001/2002 when TDK interactive shoved "ROBOTECH BATTLECRY" out the door. that game is a quantum leap beyond whatever GAMETEK had planned for CRYSTAL DREAMS to be, but is nonetheless a virtually unplayable turd all the same. HG and ROBOTECH attempted to get a free ride on the coattails of the transforming robot craze of the 1980's, just as they have attempted the same with the 1980's retro-revival of the first decade of the 21st century. it's ALL about the quick buck with HG; then as well as now...

-BY FAR. AMEN. please, stop the bellyaching, people. these are HIGHLY advanced precision replicas, most assuredly NOT your atypical "Toy" as with any engineering this close to bleeding-edge, there are bound to be bugs. YAMATO can do well to improve the "Shakedown" phase in their development process, but in engineering work this complex, one can seldom anticipate every possible problem factor that just might happen to come along, unless you just happen to be a multi-billion dollar government aerospace contractor, that is. even they, however, often make serious mistakes. considerable resources and all. still, no matter how bug-free these "precision replicas" may ever hope to get, they will never be "Toys" in any of the conventional senses, and simply will never be meant to be Glad-handed anything like the average kid's toy. it is just simply impossible to make something like these VF replicas to the precise tolerances that they are designed to, and then expect them to handle the rough-housing that your typical, child-safe TRANS FORMER is specifically designed to endure...

AAUUGGHH!! NEVER MIND THE ALMIGHTY DAMNED LINE ART!! MAN, can't you line-art fetishists ever see the point i'm trying to make? the line art is virtually never, ever of ANY USE AT ALL for anything beyond a conceptual starting point when attempting to design a modern, PT toy/replica/model of a variable-form Mecha. original line-art SELDOM, if EVER takes into solid account EXACTLY what a variable-form Mecha must look like in order to actually pull of the transformations it is supposed to be capable of. and the early-1980's VF-1 art there is CLEARLY NOT THE SLIGHTEST BIT IMMUNE TO THAT RULE. if YAMATO was to make a new VF-1 that actually looked like that line art, then i could guarantee you that the results would have FAR more in common with the old ARII 1/100 BATTROID in overall appearance than anything else. now, tell me, what kind of FIGHTER or GERWALK do you think a BATTROID like that could make?

it also tends to look rather like her knees are exposed... diectly ABOVE the knee-pads of her boots. talk about ill-sized!!

be thankful that you actually have that "few hundred dollars" to blow. for my part, i've had the 1/60 YF-19, VF-11B and 1/60v.II VF-1S on my queue for quite some time now, but have just recently come to point where i can actually start thinking about obtaining any of them. i'll be FINALLY picking up a YF-19 this month or next off a fellow MWer. LONG OVERDUE indeed, as i've wanted one since 2006. after that, i'll have just the 11B and 1S left to obtain to complete my personal stable of "Valk essentials" i just pray that those two don't take me another half a decade to track down, especially now that both are quite OOP AFAIK, and YAMATO seems rather geared up now for MAC. 7 and not much else...