Shaorin

i'll start... Thanks, Man...

the VF-1 is a sleek fighter jet that transforms into a rather sleek-ish Mecha. the 1/60v.II nails that dead-on, IMHO. if one wishes to turn their VF-1 into something resembling a FAZZ GUNDAM or the like, then there's always the armor sets out there...

nice!! i just signed up so i could access the full sizes...

well, what does it look like, anyway? a WIP kitbash consisting of combining the old ARII SC "Lana Isavia" model kit with one of the many VOCALOID "Miku Hatsune" figures to be found in abundance. really doesn't look like she'll be half bad when finished. she'll surely blow away the old stock ARII kit, at the very least...

you're right, come to think of it. i really need to get myself one of those. i mean, the old, infamous 1/72 VF-11B 1stEd. was my VERY FIRST YAMATO product, just abut ten years ago now, ant it really is about high-time i came full circle, and get myself blown away by just how far Yammie has progressed with that VF design...

Amen to that!! i occasionally take the time to browse through the TRANS FORMERS at my local stores, and OCCASIONALLY happen across a halfway engaging item... never before having to sift through PLENTY of shelf/peg-warming CRAP, though. i guess i'm just not eight years old anymore... it seems to take an awful lot of pretty damned impressive transforming robot to really light my ignition these days, and for that, it just doesn't seem to get any more damned impressive than modern YAMATO MACROSS products...

for some odd reason, the -1J Hikaru T.V. always has seemed to evoke a "NASA space program" feel to me. it just always felt like a perfect product of it's time, the early 1980's, and the dawn of the NASA SPACE SHUTTLE programs and some truly amazing high-technology. then again, it might be just me, as my parents did in fact rather saturate the first ten years of my childhood with space-exploration paraphernalia, such as scale models of various NASA vehicles and posters and framed blow up photos of the NASA orbiter system on it's launch pad and gantry network and all. what can i say? my parents wanted me to become an astronaut or something. needless to say, that particular dream never went anywhere at all, else i'd probably have much too busy a life at this moment to be wasting any time here on MW. at any rate, while my personal space today very much reflects that of a devoted Anime OTAKU, rather then that of the "wanna-be-an-astronaut-when-i-grow-up" bedroom of my childhood, i still, to this day, have those beautiful framed photos right at my computer nook, alongside my currently tiny VF collection, and my deeply-rooted personal respect and fascination with Aerospace and Space-exploration technology; that said, i nonetheless have a yen to eventually add a 1/60v.II Focker -1S to my collection, and as such, i suggest that you should eventually buy both of them yourself as well. both, in the Yammie 1/60v.II variety, are essential additions to any MACROSS collection, IMO, and are easily the best first two candidates for one's first VF "Toy" they both so frequently capture the look and feel of a great, bygone era, of incredible raw energy and overall engineering virtuosity...

i've been noticing a fairly large modicum of MW members lately, that tend to like to leave their VFs in FIGHTER mode, never transforming them even once. i can understand that for VFs that one might own that have known structural faults on their particular copy, but otherwise, that mindset kind of rather defeats the purpose of a perfect-variable VF toy, don't 'cha think?

the hell they are!! these "Toys" may not be intended for people to bang around like an eight-year-old with his G.I. JOEs, but they sure as hell ain't no "Fabergé egg" either!! i've had the 1/60v.II in my sig since 2008ish, handle it quite often, and it usually sees at least one transformation a month. in all, it has probably seen at least a hundred transformations to date, and it is STILL, to this very day, tight as can be, with no plastic yellowing whatsoever. i'm fairly sure that i can confidently assure anyone that YAMATO definitely finally got it all right with the 1/60v.II series...

for me, a big part of the charm of modern YAMATO MACROSS products is in handling and manipulating a fully variable scale replica, the overall caliber of which, was nothing more than a rabid fan's wildest wistful dream about a scant decade ago. i'd bet that, back around the late 1990's, at least a good percentage of the MACROSS/ROBOTECH fandom felt that they'd never get it better than the old 1/55 chunky, and the 1/72 HCM, for the few lucky enough to actually have one, at the time. those without the connections or financial wherewithal to obtain the skyrocketing-in-value original MACROSS 1/55's would have to consider themselves lucky to be able to settle for the bastardized TRANS FORMERS "JETFIRE" repaint. surely there were few, if any, back then, that dared to imagine that less than ten years into the 21st century, MACROSS fans would have access to highly advanced, remarkably accurate transformable "Scale Replicas" that even at a casual glance, put their once cherished and high-priced 1/55 "Toys" to absolute and total shame. myself, i was one of those poor, pathetic, JETFIRE-owning fans back then, any true MACROSS variant hopelessly beyond my reach. then YAMATO came, in Y2K, and started to produce new MACROSS products that, while admittedly were quite godawful, at least established some hope for the future. as a result, many, including myself, gave YAMATO their early votes of confidence, and many got burned, including myself, many, many times over. still, many fans could see YAMATO's potential, and could see that the company was clearly breaking into uncharted territory by continuing to develop advanced techniques that pushed the envelope in their quest to design accurate MACROSS "Toys" that were capable of full transformation and superb overall pose-ability. thus, fans, the world over, continued to pour their financial votes of confidence into YAMATO, and, as a result, today we have amazing cutting-edge replicas of SDF MACROSS and MACROSS PLUS-derived Valks that are the most accurate and advanced to date, by far, and promises for much more yet to come in the future. if that isn't a surefire reason to pick up and play with these amazing "Toys" then i don't know what is...

several times a month on average, for both my 1/60v.II and 1/72 HCM VF-1J. average that out, and my 1/60v.II probably has seen over 100 transformations since i first bought it around 2008ish, and it is still to this day tight as a drum. anyway you slice it, that is a FANTASTIC track record for a YAMATO product. they definitely got everything right with the 1/60vII VF-1...

you may have noticed that all tre breakage points so far are made of the same, "Waxy" looking grey plastic. i theorize that the plastic looks that way in the first place because it is some sort of poor, inferior grade... at any rate, very much the wrong grade to be using anywhere on such a toy... certainly not on any key structural components, at least. in sum, YAMATO's Chinese factory was jacking off again, as they were so damned fond of doing before YAMATO finally went in and laid down the law a couple years ago. too damned bad they didn't do it sooner...

EMPEROR PALPATINE: you want this... i can feel it, the hate is swelling within you... take your lightsaber, strike me down with it. GIVE IN TO YOUR ANGER...

now come on. how could anyone possibly hate this sweet little thing? i mean, REALLY?

and this really scares the crap out of me, considering that i've been planning to buy one of these 19's off a fellow MWer within the next couple months or so... happened to mine as well, almost right off the bat, during the second transformation i put it through, IIRC. thankfully the replacement shoulders YAMATO U.S. sent me have held fast to this day, transformation after transformation, and nothing else on the model has shown any signs of weakening or breakage, knock on wood...

like i've mentioned before; cut little bits of electrician's tape, stick 'em in the slots of whatever joint you want tightened up, re-assemble, and Viola!! instant tightened joints! i did this to my old HCM VF-1J, with every last joint, front to back, wing to wing, and the sucker has stayed tight as a drum throughout, transformation after transformation. same for my 1/60v.II of the same Valk; i had to tighten the wing joints, as they were getting a bit loose. today, they are both as tight and smooth in their action as can possibly be...

thought i'd post these for the sake of it; did all three from scratch, back around 2008/2009: found both the KENWORTH W900 and the STARGATE ANUBIS as complete, untouched kits at a thrift. the PATLABOR HELLDIVER i found at a comic shop for cheap, as it was missing the frontal chest-half, back in the late-1990's. i cobbled together a replacement chest-half back then, and did a quick slap-together job on the rest. i went back to it in 2008 or so, and gave it something of a proper paint job, as well as some decal-work...

at best, ROBOTECH was an early stab at a trojan-horse for introducing realitively minimally-adulterated Anime to a U.S. T.V. broadcast industry that was simply not ready for it. at worst, ROBOTECH is a naive series for a naive period of U.S. history. in any case, however, i feel that it is a product long out-of-date, and best forgotten. it's time is long gone, and HG simply cannot seem to grasp the simple fact that it is impossible to practice such outdated business techniques in this modern, information-empowered world. whoever calls all the ultimate shots over there at HG is clearly a person frozen in time that simply cannot be bothered to understand how today's world is...

i know they are. i was just trying to explain my point of view to "Noyhauser" and i ended up getting a bit argumentative in the process. Sorry...

in all the time i've been on this forum so far, i honestly don't recall catching MW's co-founder Shawn hanging around here even once. anyone privy to why he does not seem active in at least this end of the MACROSS fan community any longer?

AS OF 9-16-11; CLEAN; http://ilolamai.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d47c1ms

nor did i, miraculously, and i've seen it twice, at that...

WHAT?!?

just finally bit it yesterday (9-15-11) on a PS3 "Move" bundle, as that was the best overall deal in my area. well, "It only does Everything" whatever the hell that is supposed to mean, and i already have several games for it that i bought months ago when they first came out, so it was high time i picked one of these incredible, magical, sexually-charged "Everything" machines up for myself, i suppose. at any rate, despite the fact that i had just dropped $350 on the damned console, plus another $20 on MGS4 GREATEST HITS, i just couldn't seem to help but drop another $50 on this, what with it's rather Adorable female chara designs and all; comes with a very nice Artbook and a fairly useless (to me, at least) Omake box containing a couple decks of cards (one with "spirit elements" from the game itself, the other a standard deck of playing cards with photos of the characters on the K/Q/J/A cards) at any rate, the first games me and my sister tried were the CASTLEVANIA; LORDS OF SHADOW that she bought earlier this year since she is an ardent CASTLEVANIA fan, and MGS4, as i am something of an MGS Veteran, having gone completely through every MGS so far save for 3, which i never cared for, and, of course, this fourth installment. what can i say? graphics are awesome. the game manages to look and feel so hard-boiledly realistic that it can get somewhat disturbing to me at times. still, i'm managing, and am about three hours in at present...