Chronocidal

I like the idea, but I don't think any re-write of the connective tissue between 7 and 9 could ever actually make either of those movies work in a "cohesive" way in the first place. Nothing about the setting of the sequels works from the foundations upward, so you can't really rebuild anything without nuking it to bedrock level first. I can't disagree that there was potential in some of the ideas they explored, but it was all built on nonsense that falls apart if you think about any aspect of it for more than 5 seconds.

Yeah, it's painfully obvious how much HLJ is overcharging on this. Just straight up 30%. To ship just the VF-19 with FedEx would total about $130, with a rough breakdown of $50 actual shipping, $75 duties, and $5 extra handling whatever. I've got until April to ship it, so it's staying there for the foreseeable future. I'll see how much AE wants to charge me to ship it along with my HMR VF-19P, but I am still not keen on using DHL for anything.

Just got one copy dropped into my HLJ warehouse, so it gets to sit there for a while while they sort out shipping.

Same for the intakes, but those shoulder panels were always intended to be behind the shoulders, so it'd just be going directly against the original animation. Interesting though, the new photos just make it even more clear that there was some intensive retouching of those early product previews. The panels divisions are all clearly visible in the instruction manual, when they looked almost completely scrubbed out on the product site. I kind of wish they had managed this sort of neck cover on the YF-19, but I'm not sure yet whether I like the collar sticking up behind the head. Hopefully it can stow deeper than their preview images have shown.

I mean, there's probably no reason they couldn't use those holes to help anchor the sound booster, but judging by the HMR (and the Yamato VF-19s for that matter) the holes aren't in the right spot for the VF-19P fins anyhow. I am hoping the final product isn't so sloppily painted though. I guess they wanted those spots to look like thrusters or something, but they couldn't even get the holes painted black around the inside.

Will give them credit, I think I do like the proportions of this one's nose section better than the Yamarcadia (better shape of the neck/LEX, and it makes the nose look longer), but this thing looks like a genuine frankenvalk. There is so much Yamarcadia DNA here, I don't know what to properly call it. So much of this looks directly copied, it's kind of insane. The landing gear look straight up identical (minus the paint, of course ). I think they did a bit better with the knee extension, but then again, the Yamarcadia didn't really need the sliding covers for the Fire Valk, just the YF-19. Bring on the Yamcadai DX! Though, moreso, bring on the rest of the VF-19 series. I'm still waiting for someone to make a white and black VF-19F.

Honestly, it's probably more about the licensing, like so many other things currently driving the franchise. They seem to be prioritizing designs they can freely sell to anyone, rather than just the local fanbase. Or from a different angle, they might not be able to get the licenses to make those specific characters. We haven't seen anything from the other pre-Frontier series either, I think. I still want an actual Sheryl valk though.

Honestly.. if we're going with Palpatine surviving, there's no reason Ben didn't. After all, he just fell over and disappeared. Not like he was dropped down a hole into a reactor that exploded, or anything.

Boy I hope Jazwares reconsiders their packaging for the Tie Defenders in the future. Good thing I picked up a pair. I was only able to pull together three (mostly) un-warped wing panels between the two. Seriously, those plastic molds had a death grip on the ships, I had to cut them out with my sprue clippers.

Dunno if this is on anyone's radar, but apparently MR got the molds to the old Diamond Select phaser and communicator. Not sure whether it's missing any major functions, but I was not expecting the price to be anything this reasonable, and I just decided to order one on impulse. https://www.masterreplicas.com/collections/star-trek/products/star-trek-phaser-type-2-2266-69

Yeah, it's kind of a natural progression to the active camo/paint they had in Delta. I don't think we saw anything like it in Frontier on a valk (unless you want to count Battle Galaxy ), but they obviously can project holograms over pretty much anything they like at this point.

Yeah, I had varying levels of leg lock on the couple I got, and it was never consistent. The tabs were pretty shallow, and it wasn't hard to knock the legs loose on any of mine. For all its failures, that is one thing I don't think the 171 ever had issues with. I can't say I ever had the issues with the Yamato 17s' feet that I did with the VF-19s', but I also had even less desire to display a 17 in gerwalk than I did the 19s. Mine seemed to hold up well-enough in battroid, but I never displayed them that way for more than a few minutes at a time. I'm probably a bad judge of 17-related stuff in general, I was just happy to get a solid fighter mode to display. Yeah, fair, I guess I was never a big enough fan of the 17 for the issues with the Yamato one to bother me? I thought it looked good enough, but it did have the same kind of weird backpack issue that the DX YF-21 has. It was always one of those designs so firmly planted in the "impossible anime magic" category that it was never going to really look like the animation. What I guess is kind of funny to consider.. have you looked at the old Bandai 1/65 versions? They were far more limited in articulation and features, but I'm starting to think they got some things right that neither of the more modern takes have figured out.

Yeah, the general availability of this one speaks volumes. Though I do suspect it's kind of a perfect storm of disinterest. Bad representation of a design that already had low international appeal, just due to the weirdness of the show it came from. Basically, anyone who really wanted one probably got the Yamato when it was new, and was happy with it. But since that point in time, there's really been nothing to make any new fans of the design. The Fire Valk at least has overlap with the YF-19, which is just eternally popular, but the VF-17 doesn't have that. Sadly, Bandai is chasing the international dollar with a design that has no real demand locally or abroad, rather than making stuff for their primary market that everyone wants, and would still jump through the financial hoops to get it.

I think the trick to this is that, if you didn't have to stick the gunpods to the outside of the YF-21's belly plates, you could absolutely just make a small bulge like the Yamato VF-22s had, and it would look much better than their actual gunpods. Yamato didn't attempt that internal mount either, it's just not physically possible. At least with the VF-17, you can just leave the gunpod off, and pretend it's internal.. but then again, you're still missing the actual gunport on the leg, which I'm fairly certain Bandai couldn't be bothered to even paint on. Which.. yeah, that's another ten pounds of $#!7 on this dumpsterfire. Even ignoring the proportional differences, the 17 and 171 share almost no panel detail whatsoever, and the 171 is covered in micro-missile launchers that the 17 never had. I think the absolute best case you could ever make for this thing? It looks like a halfway point between the 17 and 171, as if it was a test model for the upgrade process. Which.. ok, yeah, I could buy that, planes go through those sorts of mid-lifecycle upgrades all the time. Still, I absolutely recognize that it's just my coping mechanism to explain away things that don't make any sense in-universe. I kind of came to appreciate the "Strange New Worlds" Enterprise in the same way, since, if I ignore any actual adherence to any timeline at all, it looks like a mid-point between the TOS and TMP versions. I can appreciate the design and its theoretical lineage, even if it's completely outside the bounds of the canon.