Chronocidal

Ok, yeah, awesome. In for two more this time around, and maybe I'll be able to get them at retail, or even Amazon.

It's not bad. I had a couple issues with the neck cover, but I still managed it without looking at the instructions (and keeping in mind the warning to raise the head before pulling the torso to extend the spine). It's functionally the same process as the DX YF-19, but mostly much simpler, since it doesn't use all of the tiny folding panels in the upper body, there is no crazy folding panel puzzle in the legs, and there are no barrel things to get in the way. The Yamato version is still the king of enjoyable transformation where the 19 is concerned, but this is getting closer to that, and I didn't need to find a spoon to pry the shoulders away from the legs.

Yeah, overall I would still call all of the mentioned issues just standard quibbles with Bandai being Bandai, and they don't detract much from the valk itself. I do really like this one, since they did improve on a couple aspects of the YF-19 (the feet are so much better shaped it's tempting me to attempt to swap them out). The tampo is much less obnoxious, the general alignment is a bit easier to manage, and there's no stupid high speed hinge on the wing to leave it flopping around. All things considered, I actually even prefer this one very slightly over the Yamato in fighter mode. My biggest gripe about the Yamato Fire Valk has always been how far forward the LEX reaches, making the nose look too stubby (yes, this even bugs me more than the feet ). Bandai chose to make the LEX slightly curved from the wingroot toward the nose, which gives the nose section a slimmer and longer look. The downside is that this prevents it from converting that LEX tip into a side cover under the chest. I think Bandai also managed a better intake profile than Yamato (with covers even), though the improvement is less substantial than on the YF-19. I admit I was a little sad they removed the secondary twist joint in the gerwalk joint, and the range of that joint is disappointing, but it's no worse than the Yamato. Overall? Setting aside the YF and focusing on the VF, I think Bandai pulled off a slightly better fighter, but Yamato still managed a better battroid, and the Yamato versions will always be more fun to transform. That being said, I am in for the long (and expensive) haul toward the rest of the VF-19 line, and I'm hoping against hope that Bandai actually goes beyond the canon schemes to give us some variety, even if it's just something from Macross 30. I really hope we get the F/S/P, but my personal holy grail would be the white VF-19F with black stripes from the Master File. Do it Bandai, I will buy four. I'll still buy several P-models too, and probably do the same repaint I'm planning for an HMR version, but boy it would be nice to get some alternate schemes. Come on Bandai, make it happen!

Yeah, the face settles directly into those angled notches. Really easy to scrape up the face if you even slightly try to move the torso around before raising the head out of the way.

Yeah, they work, but what's really missing is a notch to keep the barrel aligned. Wouldn't have been hard either, all they needed to do was add a stud to the underside of the barrel that would lock into the recess in the center of the backplate. The gun stays mostly level.. it just doesn't get held in place by anything.

Hey, I'm just happy I can pose this one on the feet that way. The stupid mechanism in the YF-19's leg meant the feet can't be pulled out in fighter. In this case though, I figured the door made a nice reference line to show how everything was lined up vertically, even if the angle of the pic showed the door slightly tilted. A few notes on this one though.. This is absolutely a Bandai design, through and through. All kinds of little considerations to make fit together more tightly or align better.. all of which are unnecessary, and make transformation more difficult than if they'd just left well enough alone. Yeah, carving a slot for the shield to fit against the legs tightly sounds like a good idea.. Until you go to mount the gunpod. So you stick it between the arms, and press the legs together to hold them together to hold it there... and now the shield won't fit because you have to spread the legs to fit it into the slot, which lets the arms pop apart, which leaves the gunpod falling out. I'm also fairly certain that nifty mechanism to retract the purple lenses in the shoulders will be the first thing to break when people stress the shoulders from posing. And as innovative as that folding neck cover is, holy cow would I just prefer a removable one. That thing added so many extra layers of complication. You can't open the hinged panels to manipulate the cover panels unless the arms are rotated back.. which means you can't lift the panels out of the battroid position until you fold the arms back, which won't work when the spine is in the way from still being in battroid mode. Then in the reverse direction, you can't pull the head out until the panels are raised, which means the arms can't fold forward while you can raise the head, which means the arms being folded backward gets in the way of raising the head. Seriously. Those panels get my vote for most astoundingly irritating feature on a valk in the past year.

So.. the I finally got my copy delivered from AE.. yeah.. that's the absolute last time I deal with DHL. Period. Long, epic, and ridiculous tale there, but that's for another thread. Anyhow... I dunno what's wrong with all y'all's gunpods.

Boy, that's definitely.. something. I kind of feel like they really should have attempted an easier subject than this one on the first go-around. Specifically, all the blocky layers on the saucer kill any illusion of curvature, to the point that I feel a pixely-looking stack of plates would be a huge improvement. Maybe I'm expecting too much, but it feels like the standards set by their Star Wars sets have gotten almost impossibly high in comparison. As a specific thing though, the deflector looks.. better than I expected, but still feels like it needs a central printed dish added in the middle.

To be fair, you never needed to use the alternate arm shield for the Yamato. Bandai just decided that one shape was good enough for both. Will cross my fingers that mine gets delivered properly tomorrow, and I'm going to just show up early to make sure they don't try another premature drop off. If this thing shows up before 3pm tomorrow, I'm going to be writing a very colorful nastygram to DHL about their garbage service.

That's the thing.. I've tried. I signed up for every DHL online tracking account I possibly could, I registered my address, phone, email, and any other info I could with them, and nothing works. I established that account, signed the "please deliver when I'm not here" waiver, and then none of my packages show up as valid, if they even show up at all. It's like nothing going to my address is actually inside their main system. When I tried to manage my delivery through the website for this package, the tracking number threw an error saying it wasn't even valid. I really have no clue what is wrong with DHL in my area, but it is absolutely incomprehensible how absolutely nothing works about their website. I'm just at a complete loss. This is why I avoid using them if there is any other option.

Maybe he's just prepping for a giant bbq? Looks like he's wearing a Sith bib.

Ugh.. apparently I missed getting my delivery for the second time from DHL.. after specifically scheduling the delivery for monday after I get home from work... I don't know what even is happening with this service, but I honestly feel like the customer support rep was trying to gaslight me into believing they're actually paying attention. I got two email notifications today. One that my package was out for delivery, and a second that the delivery attempt failed. He just insisted repeatedly that it was never actually attempted. Sooo... I just don't know what to think. I'm just not trusting them, so I'm going to be home at the time they keep attempting the deliveries to see if they ignore my scheduled delivery time again. ANYWAY... about the actual Fire Valk, yeah. That's annoying to see they've got that issue with the head, but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Leave it to Bandai to fill the inside of the backplate with details that will rub the plastic.

Pity that DHL tried to drop this off today while I was at work, or I'd be able to mess with it right now to experiment. Fortunately was able to call and (theoretically) schedule them to drop off after I get home on Monday, so we'll see if that works. Had to run-around their phone menu half an hour before I got to talk to someone, but at least it offered me more than the website, which just flat out refused to recognize the tracking number.

Boy I can't wait to see how terrible the VF-19 normal gunpod looks mounted there.

I'm much more interested in those than the Fire Valk.. so we'll see if Bandai actually bothers to follow through on completing the rest of the main valks. I guess it's fortunate that the VF-19P can just use the same mold, since that's probably the one I'm most interested in overall, but I really want to see how Bandai's overall shape compares with the Blazers. So far from what I'm seeing, I'm liking what the different nose and intake profile are doing for the fighter mode.

Yeah, there was never a loadout in the animation, but it makes sense,. The hardpoints are built into the structure of the wing, and who knows if they might be used for tanks as well, so it wouldn't make any sense to remove them. Also, I'm looking forward to filling up a VF-19P with weapons from the other releases. ... Someday...

These are just so ridiculously similar, I'm really looking forward to doing a comparison. Went ahead and asked AE to ship mine, along with an HMR VF-19P, so hopefully it won't get hung up due to the usual DHL shenanigans.

Yeah, it looks like everyone is somehow just completely missing all of the ways to get it aligned better. I'm not sure what to think there.

I think you could maybe say that about some of the MCU releases, but as bad as some of those got, I don't know if they actually sank to the level RoS dug to.

Probably more that they just completely missed this part. Whether that will look any better is still up for grabs though, since it's just dropping the pod even lower. Plus, Bandai didn't make the lower fin under the barrel retract like Yamato's version did. But hey, not even Bandai could remember to unfold that gunpod for some of the poses in the instructions.

Yeah, so, I'm not trusting that example. That's not being pushed down by the crotch plate, it's not even touching when you view it from the front. I think that's mostly just user error not understanding how to mount the gun so it doesn't drag. Not to take all of the blame away from Bandai though, the real problem (on this and the YF-19) is that they expected a nearly vertical grip mounting point to somehow support an angled grip without the gun also tilting downward the same amount. The whole issue for both versions could have been fixed if they just.. you know.. planned. It does look like they've attempted to address this with the Fire Valk, by making the gunpod handle rotate, but we'll have to wait and see how effective it is. That display though.. that honestly looks like they purposefully mounted it as droopy as physically possible. And I'm not one to explicitly trust Bandai not to lie with its pictures, but the single picture in the instructions showing the mounted gunpod puts it at no worse a position than the YF-19 or Yamato version. Over time, I've managed to get my DX YF-19s to display it very nearly level. Honestly, the main issue? It's that blasted connection they added so the shield locks into the torso. I hate to say this, but just like MOST of their Macross products, Bandai is absolutely terrible at understanding the necessary tolerances for the parts they design themselves, and how they have to fit together. They have never understood the complexities of how to get arms and legs to mesh well in that configuration. There's never enough room for the parts they design to fit the way they're intended, and it just leads to everything being off-kilter. In the case of the YF-19, they incorrectly toleranced the distance the arms need to attach to the shield and have it lock in correctly on the rear of the fighter. What that means is that the when the shield is attached, it rotates the lower arms upward, because the shield is pulling forward on the upper surface. That, in turn, means the gunpod is forever pointed downward. It's really easy to fix though. Detach the shield, and the arms and gunpod line up perfectly fine. All you would really need to do is lengthen the shield a few millimeters, and the issue would be gone. In the YF-19's case, you know what I did? I yanked out the attached neck cover. Leaving that structure out allows the shield to flex a bit more, letting the arms settle into a level position, and leveling the gunpod completely (you know.. aside from the bent barrel, because they still mounted an angled grip in a vertical arm slot ). I don't know if the shield on the Fire Valk is attached in the same way, and I doubt it can be, because of the shoulder flaps, but the way to get the gunpod level is probably going to depend on slightly detaching the shield from the arms to let the arms sag a little, and drop the rear of the gunpod lower.

Yeah, that's just the natural impact of the insane hip joint Bandai developed. It gives a pretty good range of motion, but holy cow does the entire mechanism of the hips scare me from all the tiny parts. Edit; Also, as a preemptive safety measure, you may want to loosen the screws in the hip joints for ease of use. The YF-19s always came insanely tight, and I know of at least a couple instances where it led to the plastic parts breaking around the screws. I can only hope that the mechanism is similar enough to be able to loosen it the same way this time around.

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.