Chronocidal

Thank you for making me aware of this sticker. As it turns out, I've got the same sticker on a YF-29 I picked up from Amazon. Don't know if it'll help me any, but if I get screwed by my imported copies, I might roll the dice with a local distributor (either purchasing one, or just contacting them) and see what happens.

Since there's really nothing to be gained or lost by opening tape holding a box closed (they aren't shrink-wrapped), I'll usually open everything and check for defects. Anything that needs fixing I'll try and fix myself and keep, but if something is defect free, I'll keep it that way in case I need to sell it later.

I didn't look that closely before, this one must come from a really interesting future! I want to know when the US will have 84 states!

I did find a tweak to the old gulleted YF-19 that would bring it closer to the VF-19 mold, it just required a few adjustments to the neck joint to lower the nose. I hacked mine up, and never finished once the new YF-19 was announced. It just sits in the box. Maybe someday I'll go back and finish it, but it just feels like a waste now with much better options available. I almost feel bad about chopping it up, but this particular old Yammie was already in a shambles in the box, and needed repairs when I got it. It did give the nose a lot better angle, but never did anything to fix the actual gullet, which is mostly due to the gear bay area being oversized compared with the later VF-19 mold. The new mold has its drawbacks, but it's so much more solid and well engineered in almost every way (looking at you, wing hinges), I don't really have any nostalgia for the old Komodo dragon version. If anything, the nostalgia is more for the time when it was released, when the market was seeing the explosion of new Yamato molds into a vacuum still mostly filled by bootleg Chunky Monkeys. It definitely looks like that particular YF-19 has been aged though, the tan color of the upper surface looks like it's been displayed in a sun room. It's interesting to note that the wing joints on one of my PF versions actually are very tight, they actually hold quite well, I think partly from the spray fixative I believe the PF finishes receive. The only loose joint is the innermost pivot, which has metal rotating on plastic. That one probably would benefit from a coat of nail polish, future floorwax, or maybe a bit of superglue. That aside though, the first thing I did with my first PF YF-19 was open up the wings and swap out the metal swingarms with permanent hinges I designed. They just lock the wings into place with a single pivot like the old YF-19 and VF-19s used. The hard part is disassembly, which requires prying out a couple of screw covers, opening the wing gloves, and then gently prying the wings apart to remove the original hinges and slip in the new ones. The hinges still look available in POM from Sculpteo, and aren't expensive at all, so if you're frustrated enough to do the disassembly, they might do the trick for you. More details about installation of the replacements start here in the old YF-19 thread. Just be careful with the wings themselves though. They were shown to be rather fragile early in release of the Arcadia YF-19, since some folks received ones with wings that were cracked clean through. I would not recommend trying to pry them apart completely. The only reason these parts work is because the wings don't tend to be fully glued together at the root, and I was easily able to wedge them open enough with a fingertip to remove the stock hinges, and slip in my replacement after removing the screw.

Yeah, no, this is just Bandai in a nutshell. "Screw you, send us the whole thing, we do not replace broken parts." I would just send them a video of it being pulled off, with a reply of "Tell me again that it can't be removed." When and if it existed, I would also post a link public to a shapeways site selling replacement parts to tell them "We know you're lying to us, so we fixed your problem ourselves." I just can't comprehend how they treat their customers like such garbage.

It's just traditionally been a laser, even if it can't face forwards like the VF-1. The YF-19's can't either, but you see Isamu use it as a trailing deterrent against Guld while dogfighting, which is perfectly in line with where the 21's is.

Good grief. Yeah, not going to be looking for fragile stuff there.

Wait, expecting Bandai to actually care about accurate panel lines? Yeah, they basically tried to blind everyone with extra panel lines, while not actually paying attention to whether they were accurate.

Yeah, I have absolutely zero expectations that they will ever offer any sort of satisfying explanation or fix for anything like this. It's less work to fix it yourself than to get Bandai to admit they did anything wrong in the first place, let alone do anything to make it right.

Which is ironically very fitting for an Ostrich.

I forget if the review I got that capture from actually showed the arms moving enough to tell of they move that way. I'm assuming those were company stock photos used during pre-order.

I'd have to dig one out check, but I thought those were just the seams from where the shoulders go together. The tops are opening caps, so those portions have to be sandwiched around the shoulder front to back (or side to side in this case).

Yeah, that is a very good comparison. And just to be perfectly clear, the HG kit still uses those same arms in fighter mode.

They're really .. "generous" about what they consider a "piece." They're probably counting every figure included in the set. I've already got a pair of Y-Wings, so probably would just make more sense to track down the Ghost and the scout ship separately at this point. That being said, these are getting to be insanely overpriced. I have no idea what determines their "retail" price, but they are absolutely only something to seek out at a discount.

Boy I would absolutely love to see how much bigger you could get the legs of the Yamato if they used the Bandai style transformation. Might still need to hollow out the underside of the engine fairings on the backplate to fit them in, but that was always one of my bigger curiosities about the Yamato design. There's a fair amount of room there, if you don't cover it up.

Doesn't that nose piece have to slide forward to provide an opening for the hip bar to fit into the nose? That's how the Bandai DX has it. The sloppy mounting is a separate issue, of course.

Seeing this.. I might go and just cancel the order I put in at BBTS. Looking like they just managed to transport all of the detrimental features of the DX to the Yamato V2 size, while adding a healthy dose of un-thinking in the process. Also.. I'm resisting the urge to scream here. Seriously.. is it THAT hard to type "aircraft markings" into google, and do even a cursory search to understand what markings might possibly make sense in what locations? I can maybe give the "beware of blast" on the nose fairings a pass, since I'm not sure it was ever defined what those were.. but warning people about propellant being stored in the tails has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever seen printed on a valk. Far as the elbow goes though, everyone's curious whether the block inside the arm can rotate like discussed in some earlier pictures. Early prototypes show it moving (like every other VF-1 has done), but it looks like that section is frozen in place in more recent pics. It would theoretically give the arm a third elbow joint.

I think the thing that strikes me the most about the arms is that Bandai made them small enough to hide entirely inside the panels, while Yamato's just used the arms themselves as the side panels. The side-by-side is really telling, the Bandai's arms are absolutely scrawny by comparison, with tiny hands to match. The Yamato's hands may have been a little too beefy, but these are definitely too small. The backpack does throw off the side profile, but I don't really notice it from the front. The upper torso just looks undersized.

Ah, interesting, that one comes with the scout ship included. Never really cared for the design myself, but I might pick that set up if I see it on sale.

I wonder if that entire backplate shelf is so complex that it couldn't be replaced with an accordion-folding panel. That seems like it would be a pretty simple way to collapse the giant gap.

I've never wanted to risk screwing up the one I have, so maybe I'll just have to track down a second one of these days. Maybe we'll get lucky and Arcadia will re-release it once the noise from the Bandai one blows over. I'm curious how well it will fare on the markets.

Yeah, this. It's all the more painful because bigger arms would have drastically reduced the badonkish look as well, by moving the tails further back. There is a ton of space behind the arms that could have been used by more arm.

I'd even take more of the V1. Just give me a PF version to match my YF-19.

I'm not even necessarily thinking of just the broken antenna. I'd like to see how many Japanese fans are as disappointed by the compromises in this design as many of us are here.

Is there some place to go and just yell incoherently about how terrible this is where Bandai will pay attention to it? Or do we just have to hope the Japanese customers will do that for us?