Chronocidal

I'm pretty sure the majority of the orange is painted, including the chest. Judging by plastic translucency, I'm guessing the parts that are molded in orange are the tails, the underside of the backpack, the outer panels of the legs, and the leg strakes. I don't think you have much to worry about for the backpack scratching the chest though? Only because there's really no reason you have to press the tail flap flush against the spine of the aircraft. That flap on mine is actually pretty stiff to move, and it would take a conscious effort to try and rub that panel against the spine. Otherwise, there's no plastic on paint grinding between the backpack and chest, or packs, that I can see.

Happy to report my second copy from AE came with an unbent laser. I immediately removed it, and stuck it in the cubby for the hands and engine petals.

I am... minorly annoyed... I just noticed that they forgot to paint the wingtip lights. Is it too late to cancel my pre-orders now? Really surprising though, considering all the other details. They didn't miss them on the HMR. Maybe the tweak to the mold upset their standard operating procedure enough that it slipped away from them. Not hard to fix really, they're clearly marked, so I might just mask them off and take a metallic gundam marker to them, since it'll bug me now that I noticed it.

First copy from AE just delivered, and she's a real beauty. Glad to finally have this design in this scale. I did notice one interesting thing though, and I'm wondering if this is an actual change, or I'm just imagining things. I know someone pointed out that the arm tabs for fighter mode still were not working to hold the arms up in a review, but unless I'm mistaken, I think they did redesign those tabs. I was concerned a moment that they looked shorter, but I also noticed that they look like they've been given some ribbing for higher friction, and they feel tighter. The arms didn't want to press on them all the way at first, and I needed more force to get them secured, and more force to pull them loose. I have to wonder if this is a specific change for this mold, given how much junk the VE-1 hangs from the arms, but I'm pleasantly surprised how much tighter they feel. Also, one thing I'm really happy to see.. the color matching on this is about the best I think I've ever seen Bandai pull off, and on top of that, the color breakdowns make sense. I took a close look at the tails, and noticed a fleck of tan paint on the trailing edge of one tail (easily scraped off). They actually did the logical thing, and molded the tails in orange, with tan paint for the tips and root edges. I wasn't planning on using those tail clips on the chest plate anyway, but that means that connection will be plastic-on-plastic, with no paint involved. And.. I know this is a minor detail, but I think this one has the most solid canopy lock of any of the DX VF-1s. The canopy clicks closed with a really solid snap. It's just a really satisfying tactile thing. In hand, this one is feeling like the best release of this line so far.

Is it just me, or does every single YF-21 thread eventually circle back to the Omega Pants?

Glad to see someone with this in-hand (though I was practically screaming at the screen at how many times he tried to mount the wing backwards before looking at the box ). Actually a little smaller than I was expecting, but I can't even say that's a bad thing, and I was glad to see it's actually got landing gear. It's funny to me exactly how tiny this original Batwing was. It always seems slightly weird to me when a vehicle like this is actually designed to be made into a toy, and the proportions work out perfectly for an action figure. It's a really nice alternative to getting horribly gonked-up vehicles that have their proportions mangled so they can fit a standard figure.

This situation is so prevalent they should just be mass producing spare lasers and sending them out to anyone who received stock of the 21. Really just stupid on every level. There should have been spares in the box, or they should have been detached in the packaging. Did they just forget how many other releases have had this exact problem?

They should have included an exclusive Jeans Guy figure with that one.

Anything's possible if you don't care about it being permanent or not. Seriously though, the Yamato's legs already just pop off, and I'm sure with the right amount of plastic surgery the Bandai's could easily be mounted on the Yamato's posts. I have to wonder if the images are color-matched though, that looks closer than I would expect the two to look pasted together.

Oof. Given the options, I'm starting to think the best idea is just slapping the Bandai legs on a Yamato and leaving it that way in battroid permanently.

Only problem with that approach is that removing the legs does nothing to slim down the back end. You'd have to pull off everything including the arms, legs, the entire belly plate and the entire rear engine sliding section before you're back working with something that could theoretically be streamlined. All I'm thinking of doing is chopping the rear side panels smaller and replacing the lower arm with something that fits the cavity and doesn't need an external cover.

What's that quote about man being nothing but a miserable pile of secrets? I feel like the DX YF-21 falls squarely in the category of "a miserable pile of compromises." On the positive side, it doesn't look as bad as I first expected.. but it definitely looks better from certain perspectives than others, and anything focusing on the back half is not pretty. It's almost like it was designed to give you a real-world implementation of forced perspective, in a weird way? If you look at it from the front, the back end actually gets hidden enough that it looks proportional. From the back end though, you get the opposite, and it looks like the plane is getting sucked into a black hole from how narrow the front looks. The shape is just such a weird combination of chunky and slim, it looks like they pasted together a 1/60 fighter front end with a 1/48 engine section. I think maybe the problem my brain has is that it actually looks too chunky to fly. The back end is so bloated, it just doesn't look airworthy, or aerodynamic. It's just.. weird. The overall proportions in fighter mode aren't even that significantly different from the Yamato, but the sizes and placements of the individual components make all the difference. It definitely needs about another half inch of nose, or rather, it needs everything from the intakes to the tails yanked backwards about that much, while keeping the overall size the same. As much as they're responsible for the bulky back end though, I don't want to blame this entirely on the legs. They're the primary source of the badonk for certain, but there were a lot of other things Bandai could have done to mitigate that chonk, and they just didn't. The arm cover panels are egregiously massive, and I see absolutely no reason they could not have been made significantly smaller, while making the forearms also significantly larger to take up the space. They look absolutely puny, and don't even fill half the space they were given. There is no excuse for how small those arms are, they had all the room in the world to enlarge them, and they chose to eat the space with a panel instead. (One small caveat here.. I will give them credit for closing that space. The Yamato had a gap there from the arms not being quite the right shape to fill the cavity. The 1/100 HG kit has a much better solution than either, though.) I'm honestly sorely tempted to remove those back panels, and redesign them, and the lower arms and tails from scratch. There's really no fixing the side profile, because the bigger legs are never going to allow the side profile to look reasonable from the back half, but at least battroid would look more proportional if the arms were bulked up to match them. As it stands now, I guess my original impression remains unchanged. The legs are an improvement, but literally everything else looks worse in all modes compared with the Yamato. And yes, that includes the tampo. Extra markings are only a positive when they aren't printed by someone who's completely cross-eyed, and constantly making you question whether something is actually causing a localized dimensional distortion.

Got two inbound right now, one from AE, the other from Big in Japan. I did get the notice of my backup from Yoyakunow, but waiting on that one before I ship it just so I don't have them all shipping at once.

Oh, fair, I forgot they were different, actually. Clearly I need to rewatch it. Just got my first copy from HLJ delivered, and yeah, laser had a fair bend and stress mark at the tip. Was able to get everything mostly evened out with some tweezers and a small space heater though. I think what's kind of funny is that one of my main complaints about the design seems to have come down almost entirely to people displaying it incorrectly (it's Bandai, go figure). I was thinking the tails looked like they were mounted too far forward in all of the early pictures, and it looks like that's because people were just leaving them in their forward position. When I got it in hand and realized they actually slide back, it was a pretty big improvement. Still too much junk in that trunk, but at least it's not looking like the tails are steering from the middle of the plane anymore. Think my biggest issue is the arms now. By deciding to go for a clean look covered in panels, they forgot that the arms were those panels, and now they're stupidly tiny to fit inside. They should be bulky enough to occupy that entire space without anything but the most rearward portion to cover the hands like the Yamato did. Even just using the same approach as the HG kit would have done worlds better. The forearms just need to be about half an inch longer, and about a quarter inch deeper so they would fill out that cavity better. Although, looking back through the thread, at least I'm not alone, but this kind of thing makes me want to scream. It's just too stupid to be believable. How difficult is it to print a literal arrow shape pointing in the right direction, Bandai? Come to think of it.. are any of the markings on this supposed to line up with anything.. or each other? Every one of the tail stripes on both sides seems to be cocked at a different angle. Feels like they hired drunken hobos to calibrate their tampo machines. The more I look at them, the more I want to scrape everything off.

Bandai themselves put up a few pics of it, I think. I recall it actually looking better that way than with all the baggage attached.

At this point? Honestly, I'm entirely onboard with that. If the HMRs are just going to be copy-pasted Yamato/Arcadia molds, I'd love to see those molds all recreated in a more compact size.

Probably because those were TV-specific markings. I don't believe any of the DYRL versions have those rescue markers, since they were only shown in the TV episode where Roy ejected the cockpit. I'm not even sure anything but the VF-1D has those. Definitely liking the colors on this one though, it's a nice contrast to the dull HMR version. So, do the tails pop off so you can replace them with ones spare Angel Birds ones?

Yeah, unfortunately I was entirely expecting them to be that boneheaded. At least in this day and age, it's stupidly easy to just scan and upload that to reprint. I expect the page to be scattered across the interwebs in very short order.

Same for my copy from Big in Japan, we'll see when my Anime Export copy gets in-stock.

Interesting, guess I know what to expect then. As a side note, YF-21 just popped up as available at Anime Export. https://anime-export.com/index.php?product=81635

Out of curiosity, is there some holiday going on in Japan right now? Ordered my YF-21 (and a pile of other warehouse items) shipped out from HLJ on Friday via EMS, but the tracking has yet to update past the origin posting.

Maybe we can hope they did the smart thing, and molded the tails in orange with tan tips? Not likely.. but I don't plan to use those regardless. They won't be necessary with the booster packs holding things in place. Far as the tent goes though, I expect it's either a piece of cardboard in the box, or they expect you to print it out and make it yourself from a page loaded with a QR code. Pssh. To make an improvement would require them to acknowledge it was a bad design to begin with, which I sincerely doubt will ever happen.

Production-wise, it would make more sense to make the two DYRL 1As at the same time, or possibly make the two remaining VF-1S releases (DYRL Roy and Max) at the same time. Still, I'm not even going to try and predict which ones they will sell as TWE. Their release schedule is all over the place, and the only DYRL 1A we've gotten was Kakizaki first. All bets are completely off for what logic they're following, if any at all.

Speaking of Batman things, I saw this actually go up for sale, and I'm really wondering if this price is too good to be true for something this big. https://www.amazon.com/DC-Comics-Batwing-Anniversary-Collectible/dp/B0CSPMM3X3/ref=pd_rhf_dp_s_gcx-rhf_d_sccl_2_1/138-1624582-5886553?pd_rd_w=BQhXf&content-id=amzn1.sym.f714e129-a2ad-4639-b076-38ae36a3f73b&pf_rd_p=f714e129-a2ad-4639-b076-38ae36a3f73b&pf_rd_r=Y2VGDMDX5XC7Q57X2QMR&pd_rd_wg=9nlxW&pd_rd_r=e811aa9b-217a-427b-aa05-726fceec4685&pd_rd_i=B0CSPMM3X3&psc=1

Have to admit, I've been tempted to pick up one of the new releases just for the fixed tail mount. But none of mine were ever really that bad, you just have to not mess with them too much.