Chronocidal

I just don't even want them to try it, I'm sick of having to screw with the crappy mechanisms they come up with to make the wings stay in place. I would crack up if they included VF-1 fast pack mounts for it though.

Yeah, it definitely looks like they just blasted it with spotlights for that picture. Really not helping sell it.

Except this "variant" is a reboxing of their very first release, but now including things that should have been included from day 1 in the box. "Oops, guess maybe we could have included the missiles before. As an apology, we'll let you buy it again."

The YF-21/VF-22 get passes because there is nothing physically impossible about just angling the wings and tails. Real life aircraft can do that just fine, even without the fancy bendy materials the YF-21 used. I don't think the VF-22 was actually supposed to be able to do that either, but I don't know off the top of my head whether that was directly stated. There was never any evidence that the VF-19 Advance could do it though, at least not in the few seconds of footage it was shown in. Bandai just did it because that release was a sneaky way to get an alternate license to make a YF-19 to compete with Arcadia. The high speed mode as seen in the animation is physically impossible, just like the way Basara folded back the wings on the Fire Valk in that pic above. The wings only ever rotated on their main pivots, and would have to pass directly through the legs and arms. The only toys that ever did this were the Doyusha 1/144 die cast ones, because they didn't have to transform. Was the YF-19 supposed to have the same flexible morphing materials the YF-21 did? Who knows. But the way the wings are shown folding back cannot work with solid objects. I do give Arcadia and Bandai credit for trying, and appreciate that they managed to come up with a physical hinge that can relocate the wing to achieve something almost like what the animation showed. I wouldn't even mind the high speed mode being an option if anyone could mechanically execute it in a way that doesn't suck. So far, we're 0 for 2 in achieving a functional mechanism.

Ugh.. thanks for the reminder of how much of a janky mess the v.1 Bandai Frontier valks were. The extra armor packs just don't fit well at all.

I mean.. actually it's kind of worse. Remember Episode 11? This is even less physically possible than the wings folding back like the YF-19's.

That's... interesting, at least. Obviously not a transforming prototype, they're pulling the same shenanigans they did with the VF-31s being solid models for so long. Can't really predict anything about how the hips/LEX/fuselage are going to transform, but you can tell it's based on the YF-19 mold (same stupid bulgy panel under the nose with the opposite curvature, because of course they're going to double down on the worst-looking aspects as if they're some kind of trademark). I'd actually love them to curve the LEX more, like they did with the HG kit, so it intersects further behind the cockpit. Still looks like the same rough shape as the Yamato/Arcadia design, which.. why bother at that point? Try something different already. I can see where it'll be a similar comparison to the fighter mode differences though, and I'll be happy to grab as many VF-19 variants as I can, provided they actually make them. Will probably wind up a similarly more skinny battroid at the end of the day. They still need to make the canards angle up further. I'm going to go against the grain though, and say just nix most of the tampo, especially the intake markings, or just print them in either a different color, or an outline only. They look entirely out of place, and clash horribly with the red plastic. Boy I hope not.

Hold up a moment.. are they going back to the old style diagonal-zip suits from the second gen space sets?

For what it's worth, if you're going with fighter displays, the Advance is a better option anyway, since the feet on the YF-19 version are so bad in fighter mode, and the markings are much less excessive. The benefit of the YF-19 update is mostly the extra knee joint, which doesn't matter in fighter anyhow.

Yeah, VF-1Js are not specifically the problem. This is just the classic Bandai "No one likes anything but the main character" strategy on blast. And this isn't even a Hikaru problem, this is specifically re-releasing the single most common hero design repeatedly.

Had to dig a bit for this topic, just noticed this is getting a re-release next summer. https://anime-export.com/index.php?product=86121

Double post, realized there was a dedicated thread for the 1/48 Swordfish.

Man.. Bandai is just allergic to making their products actually available to the people who want to throw money at them.

It is kind of a dumb issue to have, but it really comes down to how the part arrangement on the different sprues works out. So for instance, the YF-21 comes with the jagged yellow markings over the intakes molded in yellow. That's a separate piece. That's great to not have to paint that part. But then you get to the M&M VF-22s, and suddenly that part needs to be the same color as the main body. Whoops. You're left with two options here. Either you're going to include alternate sprues of the correct color for that part with each version, or you're going to take the cheap way out and tell the customer to paint it, or include a sticker to cover it up. Bandai has done both in various kits, and I have to assume it just comes down to what makes the most financial sense. The HG Fire Valkyrie kit includes several sprues lifted straight from the YF-19 release for some of the joints, and even includes parts that won't be used until they make a normal VF-19F/S. You get a ton of spare parts, but that's something that works into the price. The Mirage Sv-262 was hilarious for this, because the dual white and magenta scheme basically meant you had another half a kit's worth of unused parts when you were done. In the VF-22's case, I'm just guessing it didn't make any financial sense for them to include an entire sprue in gray, rather than letting the modeler paint or decal over a single black part that needed to be gray. Edit: Just opened my kit to look, and I'm assuming this is about the upper arms. Yeah, they're the color of the main body, because the upper arms on the YF-21 are blue, and each of those two parts are spread across two of the larger sprues containing a large amount of the main body of the valk. Including a spare copy of those sprues molded in gray would be been incredibly excessive, and very likely increased the cost of the kit substantially. Otherwise they would have had to make a dedicated sprue mold of just that part for this release. This one was already a massive price hike over the YF-21, so the extra cost to include those parts in their proper color just wouldn't have made any sense. Although... I'm really curious why they included the barrier punch effect in gray. That's just really strange. This won't be a problem on the M&M versions, since they have their upper arms molded in their main body color like the YF-21. However, like I said above, they don't have the upper intake zig-zags, so we're getting stickers for them the same way.

Yeah, lumping a ton of items that people may or may not want all together is a bizarre way to arrange it. And aside from that, until they can actually meet dates they set, that list really means nothing.

I find it (and most of the 31 series) much easier to handle if you remove the canards. It's not the best option, but it does give you a nice place to pick up the valk by.

Not even kidding, just pick up one of the Yamato VF-19s. The trailing edges of he wings are sharp enough to use as a general utility knife.

Yeah, Hasegawa has only produced one type of YF/VF-19 airframe. Modelers have customized both the 1/72 and 1/48 molds in a crazy number of ways to make all of the custom versions you see, like the Nothung or other derivatives, including a lot of customs to make the other VF-19 versions. I'd really like to see official kit versions of some of those other types though, especially the VF-19EF Caliburn SMS mod.

Yeah, I'm not terribly hopeful, but I'm just thinking of this in terms of what the path of minimal effort on Bandai's part will be, in terms of what changes they will need to make to the packaging going forward. Just in terms of prior releases, the Angelbirds release gave us a box big enough to contain the bonus flight stand, and the normal stand tray was updated to contain the extra tails. Assuming they use that box, and don't repackage the flight stand with missiles, the most likely option for where they will pack them is to re-design the normal stand tray to contain them in place of the extra Angelbirds tails. That would give them a ready-made standard display stand tray capable of adding the TV missiles to any future release as a pack-in. Will they actually do it? Who knows. What occurs to me though is that the TV missiles are the least labor intensive of the weaponry (no assembly and minimal paint/tampo), and adding them to future TV releases in a redesigned tray using an existing box is far cheaper than another production run of the full missile set.

Yeah, this was at the original release, not the more recent re-issue. That was basically the only attempt I ever made to get Bandai to replace a missing or broken part, so I don't know if things ever changed, or if it was possibly just the vendor I used that didn't try very hard.

I need to get on this as well, and develop a good pylon mod to get them to attach directly to the unmodified wing. I'm almost kind of tempted to just mod the pylons themselves to attach to the Bandai weapons, but the Hasegawa ones are much more detailed. I forget how many packs I actually picked up, but fortunately the number of missiles of different types works out pretty well for arming up a good number of valks at once, since the opening loadout from DYRL was two boxes and two dual reaction missile mounts, but Hikaru used four boxes in the finale. I think you can equip the entire DYRL opening group and Hikaru's 1S with four missile sets, which leaves you enough TV missiles for pretty much all of the appropriate TV versions as well: Roy, Hikaru's 1J, Max's 1A, and the theoretical TV Kakizaki, if it ever happens.

Being totally honest, I'm halfway tempted to sell one of my first release copies, and just trade it out for this one, since it will have the later mold improvements like the fixed nose cone.

I'd say nuts to the redo, just go big, and give us more 1/48 valks. I'll just have to start selling off the older ones to afford them, but even that's a benefit, since it would mean the collection would shrink overall, since I'd be selling multiples to buy singles of the new generation.

So.. I admit, I was actually joking about it being cheaper than buying a missile set for a VF-1 you already own.. But wow. Granted, that's not accounting for the Tamashii Tax, but still. Between the exchange rate and markup on the missiles, yeah, it's cheaper to do this than get a missile set, if all you want is the TV missiles. Obviously, you don't get the DYRL boxes and RMS warheads. But still. Pretty funny. All I'm really hoping is that this beats some sense into the blockheads responsible for the missile situation, and they make use of the adjusted packaging to give us TV missiles with all of the TV valks from here on out.

With the way Bandai manages their releases, this might come out cheaper than buying a set of missiles separately.