Chronocidal
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Everything posted by Chronocidal
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Never had too much of an issue with the tails on either the DX or ThreeZero versions, but the gear are an ever-present point of silliness. Biggest issues I have with the ThreeZero are just that the arms sag so low in fighter that they plant the gunpod on the ground, and that it doesn't have any transforming hands that can hold the gunpod, which is something even the HMR VF-1s have. The amount of paint and panel lining is a "concern," but I won't say it doesn't look good. It's just in this weird middle category right between all of the other releases.
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I think the real fun with this one would be adapting the parts to the older VF-25 kits to make a transforming version, but I wouldn't expect this one to have a fully-molded head, or the arm or leg packs to be able to attach them.
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Really nice idea, I've used that cord for some other purposes in much larger diameters. Really handy to have, though it tends to shred if you don't melt it or coat it on the ends. Only question I'd have is whether you intend to make a solid fingertip cap for each finger, or use the wire in some way.
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Shape-wise, no, it's pretty ideal, but the joints in the elbows, knees, and feet could have used a few modern improvements that came from Yamato's later designs, and it could always use bigger tails and rear landing gear, and maybe a more solid cockpit mechanism.
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Nice! Glad you finally have one. Wish they would have released an update with the booster packs, but just having the updated version is a good upgrade from the first release. -
I would actually be really curious to see how Bandai would approach the VF-11 in general, but I'd mostly be concerned they'd pull a Bandai, and decide "they made it this way, so we can't copy them," and change things just to be unique, without any consideration for actually making it better. They can absolutely improve posability, but I don't think they'll be able to improve much of the transformation or general shape of it. Maybe better sized tails, and maybe better rear landing gear (which sounds hilarious for Bandai to make landing gear better), but there's really not much to improve from the Yamato design.
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I don't think they're going to redo the YF-21 that quickly. The VF-25 was an exception, because it was their design, headlining their own series. The YF-21 is a lesser entry from thirty years ago, and took them an exceedingly long time to develop. Bandai has a very nasty habit of taking the absolutely wrong lessons from all of the mistakes they make. Why is no one buying the Hayate VF-31? Could it be that the market is saturated with his from multiple releases, and they should sell the other ones that are showing more demand on auction sites? Naaaahhh.. they just don't want any more 31s at all. Should they redesign the YF-21? No, that would go against Bandai's absolute certainty that they know better than Kawamori how the design was intended to work. To correct it would be admitting fault. Nah, that can't be the case.. clearly there's just no demand for the YF-21 at all. It has nothing to do with people being disappointed in Bandai's design choices.
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I think their YF-19 isn't too bad, I don't mind setting that one out on the gear. It's not great, but I can appreciate the fact that the extra collapsing joint in the nose gear let them give it a waist joint, even if the gear bay looks hilariously undersized. The baffling thing about the YF-21's gear though? Bandai just completely misunderstood the entire reason you would rotate the gear at all. Instead of laying the tires flat to fit into the wing, they rotated them a full 180, made them tiny, and stored them vertically anyhow. Just.. insert Jackie Chan image here. The funnier thing to me.. if they hadn't undersized them so badly, they could have actually had room for the gunpods. The belly isn't so big they couldn't have gotten the clearance for the guns, if they had just stretched the gear a bit further, and pushed out the wing joints a bit further. Or maybe if they had recessed the guns further into the panels? It just feels like such a weird beast.. in a vacuum where the Yamato never existed, I think a lot of the issues with the design lessen. The longer I look at it without looking at the comparisons, the better it seems. It's chunky, but not un-aerodynamically so. It's thick, but still looks like it could probably fly (mostly by pure thrust from those massive engines). I actually feel like an update to the VF-22 standard would be a pretty big improvement, since it would ditch the belly packs and guns entirely, giving us "gunpods" built into the belly, and those should have plenty of clearance.
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For how much they cared about the actual YF-21 design in the first place, I don't even expect them to change anything about the base valk design at all, except maybe leaving out the fast packs entirely. If they were actually making some sort of effort, they should redo the cockpit to give the pilot some actual controls (and the seat is removable, so it's not like that would be hard), but I'm keeping my expectations at absolute zero. I'm not sure how well received it's been overall, so I'm kind of just expecting Bandai to quietly let the mold die, and maybe take another stab at the design in another ten years or something.
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DX VF-31J Super Siegfried (Hayate Immelmann Use) Revival Version
Chronocidal replied to sh9000's topic in Toys
If this one drops as low as the Max YF-29 did on Amazon, that would be worth picking up just on principle. -
Glad to hear this one came out alright! Now you can basically recreate all three modes it was seen in.. spaceflight, tent-mode, and crashed into the dirt. Though I do have to say, the tails look conspicuously normal in that pic.. I almost wish I'd gotten a broken one so I wouldn't feel so bad about disassembling it to use different tails. Also.. funny, it looks like the VT-1 does have an airbrake in the normal place. Makes me wonder.. Did Bandai just copy the features from the Yamato 1/48, but skip the brake on the VT-1 because they didn't have anyone to copy this time?
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HMR Macrosss Flashback 2012 VF-4 Reissue - available worldwide
Chronocidal replied to MKT's topic in Toys
Back up on HLJ at the moment, if you don't want to wait for Amazon to pick it up, though I can't say for certain whether the price will come out better, unless you're planning to ship it with other items. https://www.hlj.com/hi-metal-r-vf-4-lightning-iii-flash-back-2012-banc666758 -
Still fun seeing them again, it gets tough as the thread approaches a thousand pages. Also a nice reminder/reference for what parts of the valk are made of different materials.
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I was wondering if you were going to add more to the review page for it. Still looking forward to that, but take your time. It's been a very busy year.
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It's in the instructions, Bandai expects you to photocopy it rather than cutting up the instructions, and makes sure to say so (in Japanese, of course). There are places with the pattern in PDF format to download, and I believe Anymoon.com has it in the DX VF-1 review page segment about the VT-1.
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Hah, I don't know if I'll get that adventurous with it. So far the only non-reversible change I've made is to repaint a Hikaru figure as Roy, and that's only because I don't need the extra figures for both of my VT-1s. I haven't looked at the shape of the fuselage to make sure it works, but I think it should work to just snap the 1A head on a 1S and put stickers over the arrows, so I might do that, but I'm not going to be scraping off numbers and replacing them with decals any time soon. I'm still hopeful we'll get an actual release, but even if we only get a Max 1S, I'll probably call the squad good.
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You make a good point.. I've got enough assorted copies of each of the releases so far to cobble together a Hikaru 1A between his 1S and a spare Kakizaki (the cockpit donor for my Roy DYRL kitbash). They even gave us the decals to fix the tails. Really though, spare military numbering and lettering decals should be easy to come by, and it would probably be fairly trivial to actually fix all of the numbers as well, so long as you have the rest of the painted red parts from Hikaru's plane.
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I don't even care about the tampo, I prefer the TV version in general.. just give us both heads, both pilots, and a swappable cockpit console.
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Considering the VF-11s were fair shelf-warmers even before exports were a thing, I think they're perfectly justified in not expecting to get much of a return on the investment. The VF-11 is simple enough, I'd be happy to just be able to buy a kit like they made for the VF-1.
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I'm hoping the fact that they're packing them in for once means they'll introduce a new packaging layout that leaves room for them going forward. Otherwise, I kind of would have loved to see them paint the DX missiles to the same level as the HMRs. I'm not entirely sure I really want them with the red fin sections, but they would at least add something more than the black stripe.
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I know it's probably blasphemy of some sort, but I'm kind of okay if they never release that one. Would much rather have the brownie, since it's just more interesting. I think once they do that one (please do the DYRL/TV double like the HMR Bandai), a DYRL Max (A or S, I'll take either) and the M&Ms, I'll be pretty well done.
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I think that was the motivation for the VT-1 release at least, but whether that will lead to a VE-1, or any other DYRL release, is really a crapshoot.
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Maybe a silly question.. I know the TV releases all show dual ship markings for both the SDF-1 and Prometheus, which.. ok, that kind of makes sense, it's a combo ship. But the thought occurred to me when dressing up my DYRL Roy hackjob in strike packs.. did they just never actually name the ARMDs? Because... that's what the tails should say for the DYRL versions. I also wish they'd painted them all with the TV style ship markings on the underside of the chest, rather than on the thighs, but I figure the thigh markings are going to be the first tampo marks I wind up rubbing off, since I tend to hold the valks right on that spot. And maybe this is just a better question for a series/movie lore discussion. I'm currently just wishing I could get a DYRL Max of any type so I could get the squad together, even if they're not all from the same scene. Just seems really funny to me that the ARMDs don't seem to actually be named vessels, having nothing but what amounts to a registry designation. Imagine if a carrier was just named "CVN-95" or something.
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Macross Plus Ultimate Edition Blu-ray Release Thread
Chronocidal replied to sh9000's topic in Movies and TV Series
They certainly were an easy way to make copies of things, though at this point most of us carry around digital libraries in our pockets that make them pretty archaic. -
I definitely have the sloppy laser issue on both of my copies (one bent that I heated to try and fix, the other straight). Honestly, my quick and dirty fix for things that small usually comes down to slipping a layer or two of scotch tape into the rotation mechanism. I would just apply a small strip to the underside of the laser so it wraps around to fall into both sides of the crevice where the nubs snap into it, and repeat with more layers until it stays how I want it. The other option I experimented with was to just cut a new antenna from yellow styrene, and sand it to a different shape so that it snapped in firmly, but met the upper fuselage with a flat surface instead of a rounded one, so it just doesn't rotate at all. Note, I've never really examined the long term effects that scotch tape glue might have on plastic, but I've only ever done this in places that really aren't visible without disassembly. I used the same method to tighten up the individual head lasers on my DX VF-1Ss, and it was plenty to get them firm enough to move each side mount by a single laser.
