Shaorin

"LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, RICK HUNTER HAS ENTERED THE BUILDING!!!!" ( -deafening cheers from the crowds- ) (the massive audience, score upon score of dedicated RICK HUNTER fanatics, waving their lit cigarette lighters in the air in perfect unison, singing in a thunderous, harmonic chorus: " NAHHH, NAH-NAH-NAH-NAH-NAH-NAHH, NAH-NAH-NAH-NAHH, HE-EY RICK!! ("Hey Jude" -THE BEATLES))

indeed. here's my little way of giving that idea the 'ol One-Fingered Salute;

ya know, i felt the same exact way growing up with it. like i have mentioned on this forum, as well as on others; LEYNOS was one of the founding experiences that ingrained the seed of my Anime fandom. today, Anime is all about the Cutesy Girls, and i very much enjoy that, but there is indeed something to be said about the good old-fashioned military mecha Anime of the 1980's, of which LEYNOS was clearly heavily inspired by...

they also have done the SA-77 "SYLPHEED" fighter from the SEGA-CD game, and it's updated PS2 remake. check their Site out; you'll likely get a real kick out of what their "PLUM" brand name is an abbreviation of; http://www.pmoa.co.jp/ also, see my progress on this beauty in this thread; http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=35120&st=35 "VALKEN" actually. everyone out there seems to prefer the VALKEN game and it's mecha design. i must be one of the tiny handful of people out there that actually prefers LEYNOS. don't even get me started on the 1997 SEGA SATURN A.S. LEYNOS 2, however; i despise it and it's 1990's American comic book chara design, and i was unimpressed with it's gameplay, as well. i personally disown that game as an entry in the series, and am even ashamed to admit that i actually own a copy of it...

that 1/35 pilot just arrived this morn! gee, i had no idea that it would be a RESIN kit!! the EBAY auction never even hinted at that. well, this will be the very first time i've ever tackled a Resin model. so far, it ain't bad at all! the parts came cast on slabs of excess moulding, with lots of "Flash" but they cleaned up very well, as you can see in that photo above. i gave the helmeted head a very careful "Shave" to remove the mustache, so that the final figure would more closely resemble the pilot of the ASSAULT SUIT that you control in the game. well, if Resin holds TAMIYA ACRYLICs as readily as it is worked, this should be a snap! my final product will have a somewhat different color scheme, to attempt to reflect the look established in the game's ending scenes;

assembly and basic painting of the small handful of areas that required it before assembly is all finished; i've plenty of detail painting to do yet, though. i used TAMIYA XF-63 GERMAN GREY for the forearm units and antenna mast, TAMIYA X-7 RED for the red halo effect for head unit camera/sensor module, and TESTOR'S MODEL MASTER GUNMETAL for the Gatling barrels of the "HG-GUN" (name as was given in the game) overall, a FANTASTIC model, the perfect size too, IMO. a pic alongside a Yammie 1/60v.II for scale; one little point of contention, though; the ball joints on the ankles and shoulders can be a bit iffy, and have a tendency to pop out if not manipulated carefully. i'd like to say that that i just assembled it wrong, but while i assembled it quickly, i also assembled it carefully. besides, with around fifty-odd GUNDAM kits under my belt, from 1/144s, to 1/100 HG and MGs, to a 1/60 PG ZETA, i like to think that i've been around the block a couple times with Snap-Fit, Polycap mecha models, and that i pretty much know what i'm doing at this stage. this particular kit was no more complicated in the end than your average BANDAI HG, anyway... still, i don't know if that ball-joint issue is truly a flaw in the design, or what, but i just figured that i should make it known. finally, even though this IS technically a Snap-Fit, many of the parts don't exactly snap together as tightly as the average GUNDAM does. as such, gluing is recommended for this one. i myself just went ahead and glued everything, regardless of how well it came together. as a result, my model is rather rock-solid...

well i certainly hope they plummet, as i really can't afford the exorbatant prices YAMATO is asking these days, but if i could get one of the new YF/VF-19 designs for $150 instead of $300, well then we would be talking!

as do i. unfortunately, my desktop is a little less organized at the moment then i usually like to keep it;

wheee!! it just came this morning!! BIG box, absolutely packed with parts frames! NO wasted space!! it looks like it'll build to a nice, beefy size, a solid 1/35 to match those figures i bought for it!! still have yet to receive that VERLINDEN fighter pilot, but that should show up soon enough! i've already started the base coat on that DESERT STORM figure set, and i'll be painting that pilot to basically match. got a lot of work to do now!!

it most probably does, and would likely kick total A$$ if you hooked it up to a good set of Stereo floorstanders and fed it a good CD source. hell, even it's AM/FM tuner would likely kick butt!!

wheee!! it just came this morning!! BIG box, absolutely packed with parts frames! NO wasted space!! it looks like it'll build to a nice, beefy size, a solid 1/35 to match those figures i bought for it!! still have yet to receive that VERLINDEN fighter pilot, but that should show up soon enough! i've already started the base coat on that DESERT STORM figure set, and i'll be painting that pilot to basically match. got a lot of work to do now!!

wow, pretty much exactly how it went for me, back in 2000ish, as well. except i got my JETFIRE in a trade. my entire large G.I. JOE collection from my childhood, for a complete in box TF DEVASTATOR gift set, and a loose JETFIRE with a missing arm. i was taken for a real ride there, but i didn't care. i had my VERY first variable VF-1 toy, and i couldn't have been more ecstatic. in the same year, IIRC, i came across Jerry Tsai's late "VF-1x" site, and ordered a replacement arm unit for that JETFIRE for $20.00. not long after that, i custom painted that JETFIRE into a Focker VF-1S; i have been most fortunate to have been able to move on since to my two dream-Valks; the 1985 BANDAI 1/72 HCM and 2008 YAMATO 1/60v.II of the Hikaru Ichijo T.V. type VF-1J;

just picked one of these up off the BAY as well, a Verlinden brand 1/35 US Navy 'TOP GUN' Pilot figure kit; he'll be serving (with a somewhat different color scheme then the one in the example photo) as the ASSAULT SUIT's pilot...

must have been a sample from a FRIDAY or MONDAY production batch...

indeed. a profoundly weak design follow-up to the likes of the SDF-1, IMO, now that i have taken a good close look...

after all, we ALL know that RT has been AT LEAST as successful and influential in the SF world as STAR TREK has ever been, and that it is a well known fact that the late GENE RODDENBERRY himself was most keenly interested in personally helming a top-budget PARAMOUNT PICTURES RT-LAM production all those years ago, right before his untimely demise...

yeah, i've never owned nor played VALKEN before, to date. as such, i've been thinking lately about picking up a SUPER FAMICOM off the BAY, along with a copy of VALKEN. i've nearly grabbed up a copy of VALKEN's U.S. SUPER NINTENDO iteration, "CYBERNATOR" in the past, but i've been most hesitant about it since hearing that the wonder weasels in charge of the U.S. localisation back then felt it necessary to remove all the character dialogue facial shots and alter the ending sequence. i had an issue of NINTENDO POWER as a kid that had a CYBERNATOR article, and showed an english version of the game with character pics intact, so once i had found out that the game was related to my beloved LEYNOS, i had planned on picking VALKEN's U.S. edition up, figuring that it couldn't be any more edited/modded than LEYNOS' "TARGET EARTH" U.S. edition was, which was to say, not much at all. then i look into it on the net, and find out just how modded "CYBERNATOR" was, and that makes me want to go to lengths to enable myself to be able to play an original copy of VALKEN...

i will. i paid something of a small fortune for this thing, considering that it is a 1/35 kit that builds into a model about 6-odd inches high. still, $108 and change, shipping included, was well worth paying for a personal dream come true. seriously, this game and it's mecha design goes all the way back to 1990, when i was about 10ys. old, and was one of the formative personal experiences that led me towards Anime and Mecha fandom...

i'm going to be working on this in a couple weeks or so, as soon at it arrives from HK; just yesterday, at my local hobby shop, i picked this 1/35 figure set up to complement the model above with; just for some background, this Mecha goes WAY back with me, to my very first video game console, in fact, the 1988 SEGA "MEGA DRIVE"/ 1989 "GENESIS" ASSAULT SUIT LEYNOS was among my first ten or so titles for the spanking new in the U.S. (at the time) VG console, and quickly made it's place as one of my all-time favorite games, a place of honor it holds to this very day; (my original copy of LEYNOS, in it's U.S. localized GENESIS "TARGET EARTH" form, beside my copy of the original Japanese MEGA DRIVE title)

thanks, that clears things up nicely... or one could just be normal and say "ROW-BOW-TECH" 'sides, ROBOTECH truly IS a fairly retarded name for a televised action/drama, animated or otherwise. i mean, what about assembly line robots in a car factory for instance? or high-precision robot manipulator arms in a precision electronics factory? one could technically refer to any of those as "ROBOTECH" and yet,to the best of my personal knowledge at least, NONE of that crap has ever been powered by, nor ever imbued with any quasi-self-awareness by some magical Marijuana or any such thing of the sort. regardless, all of those amazing ROBOTECHnical wonders manage to continue to perform their intended jobs just fine, day in and day out, all under a magical little gee-whiz thing generally referred to as COMPUTER CONTROL...

indeed it may... but WHAT EXACTLY is there in the title logo that so clearly infers that the title should be interpreted as "Two Three" and not "Twenty Three" ? i apologize for my glaringly obvious stupidity...

i dunno... i'm a pretty serious OTAKU, been one for the better part of twenty years now, and yet i seem to consistently find myself invariably referring to the series by "Megazone Twenty Three" despite the fact that i very much know better. it just sounds right to my ears, s'all. at any rate... anyone care to explain to me the reasoning behind the "Two Three" ?

my 17yr. old little sister picked this up on the recommendation of a friend. it was a real trip and a half... http://www.sonyclassics.com/paprika/

hey people!! i just put bought a copy of this model that just came out this April; http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200622749002&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_Suits_series this is a personal dream come true. back in 1990/1991, perhaps a year at most after my parents bought me my very first VG console, the SEGA GENESIS/MEGA DRIVE, during it's X-MAS 1989 U.S. debut, i was bought this absolutely fantastic Mecha game called "TARGET EARTH" which i came to find out, a bit over a decade later, was an Anime-style Mecha game called "ASSAULT SUIT LEYNOS" in Japan, but, that fact aside, T.E./LEYNOS was, in all honesty, one of my earliest exposures to the japanese "Real Robot" genre, and it was instrumental, along with some light exposure to ROBOTECH as a toddler back in the mid-80's in grooming me for my future as an OTAKU. i have both my original, 1990-bought, threadbare U.S. T.E. edition game, as well as a copy of LEYNOS that is nearly mint, and quite complete; like all early-era SEGA GENESIS/MEGA DRIVE games and consoles, there is NO regional lockout, so my copy of LEYNOS plays just fine on my early-era U.S. GENESIS console. indeed, i have played my T.E. copy into the ground throughout the 15 years i enjoyed it until i picked LEYNOS up in the mid 2000s. it still works fine, and i occasionally have pangs to play the game through again every so often, but now i use my LEYNOS copy exclusively. anyway, i have always loved the game, and have always liked the AS-5E3 "Leynos" ASSAULT SUIT design. as such, i have always dreamed of having a model or pre-fab figure of the Mecha, but have always figured that such a thing could never happen outside of perhaps the Garage Kit industry. well, this "PLUM" company has come out of nowhere just this year and made my dream come true!! this is a VERY EXPENSIVE snap-fit polycapped injection kit, and isn't going to be like the typical BANDAI MG GUNDAM. i CANNOT MAKE a mistake with it, lest i'll have to live with it, as this model is much too expensive for my budget to be tackling half-heartedly. i am a fairly basic-skilled plastic modeler, but a PRO i am most assuredly not. therefore, i am NOT going to be giving this thing a total paint job. i'll be adding, fine details wherever necessary, but the model at large will remain in it's molded finish. if i REALLY wanted, i THINK i could make a an overall serviceable whack at a pro finish, but i'd rather have a detailed toy-like model that i do not have to worry about handling, so paint work will remain limited to fine detail. EBAY says i should expect to receive this about mid August. being that the seller is HONG KONG in origin, and judging by the many HK EBAY purchases i've made before, that ETA sounds about right. we'll see...

indeed, ROBOTECH was my Gateway, as it was for many other somewhat older/to older U.S. Anime fans out there. technically, i was introduced to ROBOTECH via MACROSS, as my actual entry point was via a copy of the old ARII 1/100 VF-1J Hikaru GERWALK. that model sparked my interest, and led me to discovering ROBOTECH via the PALLADIUM RPG BOOK ONE. that book in turn led me to the 1990's edition, double-episode per volume ROBOTECH VHS editions at my local SUNCOAST VIDEO. not long after, i was steered back to MACROSS, by way of MANGA VIDEO's editions of MACROSS II and MACROSS PLUS; THE MOVIE. from then on, i became a MACROSS fan first and foremost, putting up with ROBOTECH only because it was the only way i had to experience MACROSS, and to a lesser important degree, MOSPEADA. today, i am complete MACROSS fan, with a mild interest in the MACROSS segment of ROBOTECH, only as a sentimental curiosity. as such, i've been gradually building myself a tidy little collection of the various incarnations of SDF MACROSS by way of ROBOTECH; i have no modern interest in ROBOTECH, curiosity or otherwise, as i've never been a fan of "American Anime" the japanese invented Anime, and only they know how to do it, and cultural differences have proven to be MAJOR component of that factor. as a result, the ONLY thing that America at large knows what to do with the Asian Artform is to royally F&%k it over, well beyond any reasonable recognition...