Chronocidal

It kind of depends. I avoid DHL because of issues getting things to me here (no local hub), but I tend to shuffle items in and out of the box to find the best deal, and generally EMS comes out the best for me. It's usually a shuffle between paying for weight vs volume, and knowing that HLJ has a few specific sizes of box to use.

Oh, I do, and I'm not going to use FedEx anyhow. I'm just laughing at how their "economy" shipping is more expensive than the priority option. This isn't even going to be the total, I just tested a couple of items.. the actual box is going to be much bigger I think.

Yeah, my shipping for this is going to be massive anyhow, since I'm packing it in with a whole pile of other things I've been waiting on. I was HOPING the HG YF-21 would make it (along with a couple of other kits that were on backorder), but I'm done waiting on that one. Maybe I'll get it once more things come in. This though? Really hurts my brain.

There we go, HLJ finally getting one of my pre-ordered YF-21s in the warehouse. Still waiting on the HG kit. But yeah, that exchange rate. $227. I think that's less than I paid for the Yamato.

Uh.. YEAH.. NO, Bandai. Stop lying.

Bandai has never had any trouble at all completely over-engineering everything they touch, to their detriment. If they're relying on removable pins to keep the stupid thing from falling apart, this is just an astounding next-level of design failure. I'm genuinely curious now. Does this DX actually have more removable parts than the parts-swapping HG kit? The kit detaches and reattaches a lot of things, but I think it mostly uses the same parts for all modes, apart from the nose section.

Funny, I think it's not actually looking terrible in fighter mode in those pics, so long as you angle the camera to hide that redonkulous back end. I don't think Bandai's photographers were doing it any favors with the focal lengths making the nose look shorter than it actually is. Still looks a bit short, but not as bad as it initially seemed. I still think the entire thing would be massively improved if the lower arms were beefed up and lengthened. Would pretty much improve every mode in fact, since the arms still look stupidly whimpy in battroid, and the tails look yanked up too far forward in fighter. Just lengthen the lower arms for instant improvement. It even looks like there's room for it, under those stupid side panels.

Interesting, Anime Export just pinged me that my YF-21 order with them is in. Probably going to wait to ship that one with the VT-1 and HMR Fire Valk in August though, since my other is at HLJ, and they've been pestering me to ship my warehouse orders for months (and yet they STILL cannot get the HG YF-21 in stock ).

The painfully funny thing to me is that the delimiter mode actually looks like the most aesthetically pleasing display option, because it sheds a good chunk of the ugly garbage. I just need to find a way to attach the legs to my Yamato, and I'll be all set.

Part of me suspects Bandai is unwilling to raise domestic prices at all to spread the costs of the international releases across production, so the international releases are probably covering that entire expense category.

I had to go peek at my disc to make sure I remembered correctly, and yep, here it is. Don't know if it shows up in the first episode, but it's at about 4:30 into the movie edition. And yes, that's a photo of my monitor, because bluray software is absolutely infuriating in how it just completely blocks out any screenshots.

Given some of the changes they made, I don't think they gave a flying crap about any line art from anything. My brain is waffling back and forth over what fraction of ass this effort can be considered. Kinda feels like the "contractual obligation album" of Macross DX releases. On the plus side.. maybe the prices will tank like the Sv-262, and I'll be able to pick up a spare for my brother on the cheap.

Yeah, I'm genuinely baffled by the change, and actually caved to curiosity and ordered one at BBTS just to experiment with it. I really just wonder if the joint is just tight enough that most people don't realize it can move, or if they actually disabled it.

What I'm saying is that the green colored area and red colored area should be different, because they're designed that way on purpose on actual aircraft. What they did was duplicate control surface panel lines from the top of the wing that should not exist on the underside of the wing. If this was a car, the equivalent would be if they drew the outlines of a sun roof on the underside of the car. It has no reason to be there. All it really amounts to is laziness on the part of the CAD artists responsible for designing the molds, since they just copy-pasted the panel details to both sides of the wings. Anyhow, not sure if I can justify picking up any of these. Looks like the baby of a Yamato and a Bandai DX. Not really bad at all, but I don't need more VF-1s in that same scale that don't really offer anything new that I like better than what already exists. Can't deny the battroid is more imposing, but I'm not a huge fan of panel lining and black landing gear. The nosecone joint seems to always be off-center too, and those elbows hurt to look at. Also.. speaking of the elbows, just browsing back, I see this.. Seriously, what is even happening with these elbows? Did they accidentally glue the first joint in place, and no one can move it? Edit: Actually, one fun question, do the wings on this one ratchet? Not that I'm going to pick one up just because of that, but it is definitely something I'd like to see.

Wait, the VF-19 Advance tails are pinned? I thought they were just a much better snap than the YF-19 got? Looking at mine, I don't see any way to get a pin in there, the tails are solid plastic.. They don't want to pop off though, so I'm not going to force them to check.

To be entirely fair, they did make the nozzles a bit more tapered than you usually see. It's not really hard to think of them as nosecones, especially if they aren't hollow.

You're thinking of the trailing edge flaps, which are primarily things that only fold down, not up, unlike the toys with moving surfaces that just use simple one-piece flaps that go up and down, and aren't really accurate to anything. A lot of the details on the VF-1 were based off of the F-14's wing design, which uses spoilers on the upper surface to control roll at low speeds. I think a fair number of airliners use them as well. They're just pop-up panels on the upper surface of the wing used for control and air-braking on the ground. Those panels shouldn't exist on the underside of the wing, and the proportions on both top and bottom are all out of whack anyhow. They're pretty much just a minimum effort attempt at panel lines, which is sadly all you can really expect from any manufacturer that doesn't specifically focus on detailed aircraft replicas. If you want a good example of how they should look, check out these posts. detailing the process of customizing an old Jetfire to have all of the proper control surfaces.

Obvious visually, but it's still confusing. I just wondered if they over-engineered the entire thing, and gave it a triple joint, and people are just not moving the part that would look better instead.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but do the elbows just not rotate at the forearm joint at all? All the pictures seem to show them stationary, with all of the motion happening with the skinny extension piece. That video seems like it confirms it.. the entire lowest segment of the arm looks stuck permanently in the forearm armor, despite being curved as if it's supposed to rotate.

I hate that the parts that rankle me the most are the stupid changes Bandai made for absolutely no other reason than "We like this better than the official line art." It's stuff that's completely and utterly inconsequential to the design, and how it functions.. but they decided they wanted to change it anyway. (Yes, I'm still salty about the misshapen canopy and tails, among other things. The tails especially bother me, because an early prototype had them correct, and they changed them to be wrong. )

Not when the upper surface of the wings have spoilers that only exist on the top side by design. Hasegawa went ham and just copy-pasted most of the panel lines of an F-14's wing, but Yamato/Arcadia and Bandai both changed the spoilers into a blank panel on the underside of the wings. Unfortunately, the panel lining just makes it stick out more than it would otherwise.

Two things sticking out to me in particular: - Those are some pretty gnarly looking elbow joints, flexibility aside. - I can't un-see the upper wing panel lines duplicated on the underside. At least they didn't double up the NO STEP Markings.

Very likely several months later, judging by how much later their release dates tend to be than Japanese sites. Boy do I ever wish Bandai would just abandon its obsession with those stupid spring pins though.. looking at those elbow joints hurts my soul.

And... forgot to fold back down the lights on the wings. I'm still trying to figure out if the arms are actually as tiny as they look, or the view and angle are fooling me.

Not sure you can compare this one to the re-release of the YF-19 though. The demand for the original with all of the accessories remains much higher that I've seen, and while it's nice to have a budget version available, it's more like a consolation prize for the people who missed out on the better one.