Chronocidal

What screws can you even tighten on the arms of the YF-19? Mine won't even support their own weight they're so limp, but none of the relevant screws are even accessible, and the couple that are barely reachable are the ones that the upper arms broke around, and I had to basically fuse the entire upper arm with super glue to fix it.

LOL. Last pic is win.

Well, if you consider the fact that the P's shoulders should be identical to the F/S models' (unless of course, it uses the same speaker shoulders as the Fire Valk, which, in that drawing, it actually looks like it does), it makes perfect sense to make the fins removeable, both for financial reasons, and making fans happy. Make a single mold that can do any shoulders not used by the Fire Valk, and give it a missing section on the top that can house a variety of attachments. Then you make a set of blank panels for the S/F to use, and a set of fins for the P, both of which slide or snap into the shoulders, and just include a set of blanks for the P as an extra. The kicker for this is that if you make the attachment point beefy enough, the spot those fins are located is also exactly where the fast packs attach. So, there's already a perfectly good reason to add a removable panel to the shoulders, or at the very least, leave slots to add extra attachments. The removable panel is a little more complex, but it would look better. All they have to do is make a set of fast packs that attach in the same spot, and rotate upwards for battroid. Note... I really could care less about those fast packs, they're pretty darn fugly. But if the potential to integrate their function into the shoulders gets me removable fins on the P, I say bravo!

Oh, before it's forgotten. Graham, don't let them forget that the S/F/etc models have aux intakes built into the LERX. I don't see them on that P image, but they're definitely there on the others. Irked me a little that the Hi-Metal left those off. Granted.. adding that would require one more new piece for those versions, but as long as they're making molds for the new head and wings and such, I hope they can find room for new LERX pieces. As for the P.. I actually don't know if I'd ever seen one in color before, and I love it. I'd definitely pick one up, especially if the little shoulder fins are removable since I think they just break up the clean form of the plane. I love having the ventral fins back too, they just look like they belong. I still want to see the white with black stripes one from the master file most of all though, especially if they make one with the mid-sized wing. The wing isn't likely I know, but I can't imagine it'd be too hard to scratch-build one from spare model parts.

Good to see they're concentrating on the gear and gunpod then. While the missile bay would be nice, considering how often we even saw it in the anime, I'd rather see a good design for the full gunpod, and nice landing gear. Now, the fun one is how to implement the beam adapter. It'll probably be easier to fit than the whole gunpod, but if they go with the ejection door seen in the show, it might be tricky getting it out. And if you make it loose enough to just slide out the door, it might rattle around inside the compartment. I know the whole "spring loaded launcher" gimmick seems kind of silly, especially if it's powerful enough to launch the piece across the room. But what about a more subtle type of mechanism like in a ball-point pen? As in, press the beam adapter into it's space, and it locks down, with just a few millimeters popping out, just enough to form a button. Press the tip in, and it releases, pushing the tip out just enough to grab hold of, and pull out the rest of the way. Sure, you could try and launch it out on purpose by letting it slip past your finger, but it wouldn't involve some trigger button protruding from the leg, or any kind of hook/release/etc built into the beam adapter.

True, though the feet do need to extend at least a little to properly unfold, and let it stand without dragging the ankle cuffs. Given a fat enough leg, I don't think the missile bays would be too hard to do, but I wonder how fat the leg can get before the plane starts looking bad. The thing I have trouble picturing is how the gunpod can pass clear through the leg without interfering with the landing gear. If my memory is right, and the gunpod pops out on the outer panel of the lower leg, then there has to be a massive internal space for that thing, because the barrel protrudes from the inner side panel of the leg. I'll have to look for some more details on that later actually. I'm really curious how that gunpod folds up too, since it's not really clear in those earlier shots. I do hope they include the fold out side grip though, holding it like that just looks awesome. I think it can possibly work, but those landing gear are going to need to be really slim to let a gunpod that big fit into the legs. I don't know what type of gear is canon on this thing, but something similar to the way the SV-51's gear are built just might work.

The big problem I can see is just from the sheer amount of stuff that's supposed to be in the legs. 1. The gunpod itself, which in the recent screenshots is longer than the leg itself 2. The landing gear 3. The missile bays 4. The actual joints and such to make the leg even work to begin with Even ignoring the fact that there's supposed to be a full sized engine in those legs, I don't see how they can cram that much in there. On another subject though, how does the gunpod get removed from the leg to begin with? I don't remember how the compartment opens, or how that huge gunpod folds up to fit in there. The entire inside of the leg seems like it will be taken up by the missile bay and gear, and I seem to remember the gunpod ejecting from the outside of that leg. But considering the outside of the leg becomes the top in fighter mode, and the gunpod barrel protrudes from the bottom.. I'm going to have to puzzle this out later I think. The spot for the beam adapter doesn't seem too fancy compared with the other leg, and I can actually imagine some sort of spring-loaded or sliding mechanism working there, just to help minimize the space it takes up.

There may be a nice fix for those of us who want a dull version. While it would be difficult to paint over a transforming toy and keep the paint, a flat clearcoat may work extremely well here. I mean, sure, it'll rub off a little, but if you're not changing the color, you'll have to try really hard to see it. I suppose you could also break the thing down and give all the main surfaces a light sandpapering, but that's a lot more work. Personally the gloss doesn't bother me so much, since it is a showbird. For the later models, I'll be able to live with it, because this thing is just so beautiful. And, as bad as it might be to say, I hope this thing pans out the same way as the YF-21/VF-22 did.. very expensive first release, but the later repaints became fodder for huge discounts. If that happens, I'll probably buy half a dozen of the F/S/P/Whatever else they make. I admit I am a little sad about the ball-jointed feet though, especially since that's my favorite method of displaying valks. I pull the feet out, and balance them on them in fighter mode, standing up. If those feet loosen up over time, I won't be able to keep them like that.

"Hey, they aren't dusty, that's my weathering method!" I should have used that on my parents years ago.

Holy crap.. they're like a 1/48 valk for the 1/60 pilots to play with. I'm not really one for the bigger ships, but I might have to grab one of these for this price. Would be a fun challenge to build and paint it.

You know, I've been looking for a good excuse to learn guitar. This might just qualify.

Given the Transformers bits we've seen before, I can easily see a bit involving Jetfire. They recruit him after crashing in America.. then a bunch of Japanese Aliens attack Earth, and try to take him back. They find out that these aliens are weak to bad music, and have Rebecca Black ride Jetfire into battle against them singing "Friday," making their heads explode. In the end, Jetfire gets abducted and locked in a crate in the basement of a mysterious organization known only as "Pax Aurum," and replaced by an SR-71. The real kicker would be if they used a repainted Yammie for the figure itself. Whether anyone but fans would get the humor in that is up for grabs, but I doubt they'd directly address the Macross/Robotech fiasco. On the other hand, I can also see them parody the copyright issues directly without even using any recognizable characters. All they have to do is have the military decide to start producing a bunch of combat mechs, then suddenly have the contractor producing them completely pull and redesign their most effective designs because they get sued for stealing the designs from Apple. Then Apple gets sued for stealing the designs from Sony.

Good to know then. I keep forgetting about those little masterpieces. I'm trying to remember exactly what the merged parts in the anime were, but I think it had something to do with the way the wing mechanism was set up, and where the lower legs fit. Could be the CG model was just built a little sloppy though. Actually, now that I look again, a thin profile might be possible. For some reason I kept thinking that the upper aux intakes next to the cockpit became part of the chest in battroid, meaning the lower intakes were too small to make up the hip joint. But both intakes are one big piece that makes up the hip, meaning there's more room under the chest plate for the leg than I first thought.

The one aspect that really concerns me with the VF-17 is getting the side profile sleek. All the side views I've ever seen have the upper legs impossibly slim. In fact, I think the VF-171 actually beefed up the nose significantly in order to make the leg structure a little more plausible. That's of course ignoring that the VF-171 is (after looking closer at screenshots) apparently not a physically possible model. As cool and plausible as it looks, I think there's a lot of pieces of that plane that are physically taking up the same space in fighter mode. I hope I'm wrong about that, but it would help to explain why we haven't seen Bandai even try to make one yet.

I'm sure it comes from the fact that the hips aren't ball jointed; they actually have a double pivot. The hinge to push the legs outward would have to be directly through the intake area. Guess I'm a little sad at not having that feature, but then again, I never take the intake covers off any of my valks anyway. Always bugs me how the intakes aren't deep enough, so I just hide them to begin with.

Indeed, looking really really good. Also, 2:30 mark confirms the wings lock into the chest in gerwalk.

Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Yes, the VF-19 is incredibly awesome looking, and I'm loving how it blows the old YF-19 away (and making me really want a v.2 YF-19). But.. those stickers. WHAT??? The hamster driving the speculation wheel in my head just downed 20 red bulls, and could probably power the entire state of New York right now. I mean.. really.. the implications of that sticker sheet are enormous. The first thing that hit me: When did Yamato get the rights to reproduce the Supernova decals? I admit, I don't know what the details were behind the scenes with those sets of markings, or who actually held the copyrights to them (I would assume it was whoever produced the originals for the Hasegawa 1/72 kit). But I was under the impression that the reason the Bird of Prey and Double Nuts repaints for the YF-19 were not actually in those markings was because of copyright issues (well... aside from the complexity of those schemes, which they might have thought would be too hard to tampo on the toys). I mean, the color palettes used on those were copies of the Supernova schemes already. So, that begs the question.. why include them here? They obviously don't belong on the VF-19 (the red letters wouldn't even show up).. so are they including them as a bonus for people who will do repaints of this one? Or possibly as a bonus for people who bought the older YF-19, and wanted these stickers for it? Either way, this means Yamato is aware of how popular those markings are, which makes me really anxious for a v.2 YF-19, to see if they'll follow through with full up prototype repaints. Second, and this is arguably a bigger thing than the first.. What on earth is going on with the NUNS markings? I suppose, yes, it's just a sticker. But have we seen those markings used anywhere outside of Bandai owned Macross material before? Maybe they're thinking of MacrossR and the possibility of NUNS operated VF-19s or something. But... ok, considering they just revealed they're making a VF-17... I don't know. I'm probably overly optimistic here, and don't really know enough about the way the licensing system works with things like this. But wouldn't it be interesting if Bandai decided to take advantage of Yamato's work on the VF-17, and worked with them to produce a VF-171? Anyway though.. now that I think about it, this reminds me a lot of the hints we got from the sticker sheet for Gamlin's VF-22 (and possibly the YF-21) when it had M&M name labels. I don't see any names, since everything's in white, but I'm betting this is the sheet they'll be including with all the various VF-19 versions, so it'll probably have Docker stickers on there. I also hope that the few darker numbers and stencils mean we'll be getting a light colored VF-19 somewhere down the road. (please, white with black stripes from the master file, I will buy 10) Lastly, I gotta say the "FB" tailcode stickers cracked me up when I realized that's what they were for. Looking at the miniature VF-19 side views near the bottom, it looks like those markings are printed on the tails.

One can only hope.. only reason I only bought two was because I'm hoping for more later.

It's still there a bit, but they finally folded the side panels into place like they're supposed to be, and it does a better job of covering that up.

Thinking back to the stealth reveal they pulled off with the v.2 VF-1, it might be pretty far along already. I'm trying to remember how the sequence of events went, but I think the VF-1 was sprung on us in the middle of several other pretty large releases (I want to say around the same time as the SV-51 and YF-21 were close to being released?). I probably wouldn't expect it for at least another year, but I also would imagine they will definitely want to capitalize on the surge of interest in Mac7 due to the Fire Valk. On the other hand though.. the release of Emerald Force can't be far off, since all the hard work on the VF-19 is done. Replace the key parts, paint it blue, and it's done. Given the order of events in the series, I'd almost wonder if they want to sandwich the VF-17 in between the Fire Valk and Blazer releases. If they do that though, that would either mean the VF-17 is fairly close to done, or the Blazer is much farther off than we expected. I do think that the way this teaser is presented is much less mysterious than the VF-19 one though, and could mean they're much closer to finishing than when they first revealed the Fire Valk. The first CAD we got for the Fire Valk was a partial planform, and random drawings of a few segments of the fuselage. This one's a nearly complete drawing (no feet yet), showing off the proportions really well. Oh, and I'm putting my vote in for a red one now, hopefully with white stripes instead of yellow (I honestly don't recall which is canon).

YES! Weaponized subwoofers ftw! If this is packaged with the soundbooster, I just might have to get it. Heheh.. I'd probably be tempted to slap Bose or Klipsch or some other brand of audio equipment stickers on the thing though.

Well, lesee.. if I recall correctly, we've already had most other major appendages either outright snap off, or have their joints shatter. All that's left is for the head to explode. On the other hand, given the opinion some people have of the face on this one, I'd be highly suspicious of mass reports that their heads either broke off, exploded, or went missing (especially after the F or S variants are released). On yet another hand, I also would not be surprised if we see actual cases of the head on this VF-19 either exploding or being blown off by overly fanatical Basara haters.

All discussion of acting ability aside, I thought it was discovered that Keanu Reeves doesn't age to begin with. http://www.eatliver.com/i.php?n=5833

Pretty simple to me.. screw the stickers. Scan them into your computer, and reprint them on some decent decal film. Oh, you can even fix them up so they don't look like absolute crap from their idiot printing process. As for me, I don't plan on using any SMS markings anyway, so it won't be an issue. I've got the 1/72 kits to leave in the canon schemes, so the 1/100 kits are where I bust out my spare decal box and have fun with customization.

Those look.. really interesting actually. The F-23 variant is kind of obviously based on the real aircraft, but that F-21 looks like someone mixed the F-23 with the Falken/Morgan from Ace Combat... and arguably, I'd say that design looks much more feasible. Wow, know it's from the previous page, but way to bring back old memories. I had a few of those Ring Raiders planes.. If I recall correctly... An orange Harrier with red stripes, a red X-29 with yellow stripes, a red/orange F-86, and a silver F-19 (the teardrop shaped version as opposed to the droopy wing one). Don't know where these are, but I remember the little mounts for the rings tended to break very easily. On the other hand, I still have my entire set of Flying Fighters, all in really decent condition still (last I checked, the sound-effect flight sticks all still work). Stickers are wearing out, especially on the F-14 and F-18, but they're all pretty functional still. Made me really really happy when I discovered that the crazy huge missile supplies for those all worked on my GI Joe stuff from the same era, mostly the Hurricane.. I had that sucker loaded for bear with racks of bullpup and phoenix missiles.