tetsujin

Try this helpful excercise: Take a MISB item - you needn't start with your favorite, just something. Remove from the box and transform it five times. Now step on the box, tear up the instructions, and throw all that crap in the garbage.

I'm confused. I thought the FAST packs were the conformal fuel tanks on the legs. Is there something we haven't seen yet? On all of the other VFs, the FAST packs only work in space (or at least a vacuum), and the VF-0 can't do that. FAST packs exist in the real world. "Fuel and Sensor Tactical" The F-15's FAST packs are conformal fuel tanks, so it's not unreasonable to consider certain types of atmospheric-use conformal parts to be FAST packs. Also, I think the YF-19 and YF-21 FAST packs were atmosphere-capable as well. They certainly didn't use any of that stuff in space in Mac Plus... I don't know how exactly they're using the term in Mac Zero - that is, I don't know why they'd call the missile pods on the legs FAST packs (and I don't know if those FAST packs also carry fuel), but not the conformal fuel tanks that mount on the fuselage. But there you go. I hope they do start using underwing munitions on the VF-0 soon... I think it's nice to see the plane is carrying missiles. Even though internal weapons bays like the ones on the FAST packs have less impact on aerodynamics, (and therefore make practical sense) it's sort of cheap-looking in an animation sense. It also doesn't fit in so well with how the VF-1 stored munitions, but I don't care so much about that because Mac Zero is cool, so to hell with continuity if it gets in the way. But if I build a model of the thing it's good when people can look at it and know it's armed.

Ha, my thoughts exactly, I like the look of the 51 but there's no friggin' way I'm painting a fighter flaming Cherry Red or whatever that color is, i'll just do the low-viz thing. From what I understand light salmon-type pinks are low-visibility, moreso than grays. Of course, psycho-chick's SV-51 is definitely not low-viz. I want Battroids. That doesn't mean I'm not pre-ordering the fighter version. Mac Zero has officially rocked my world.

Thanks, Yeah, I remember seeing your monster and the resin 1:72. (I'm mainly interested in seeing nice build-ups, well-done paint jobs, etc. Fernando's Monster on AMA is still the best I've seen in that department.) I have seen the Imai instruction scans as well, of course, since I have that kit. Don't you think the linearts are fairly self-contradictory, though? The Perfect memory book shows the Monster at 3 or 4 different angles and in each one the shapes and proportions are different. Still, it's a good reference. I've already started planning my alterations to the Imai kit - it's largely my desire to see that project finished that's got me all interested in finding pictures of other people's Monsters. It's still surprising to me that there are so few built Monsters on the web. I think the one that was being sold here is still the only built Imai I've seen.

Hi, One of these days I want to get around to building my Imai Destroid Monsters. I plan on giving them the works... but for now, I got nothing but ideas, and the kits at home. I was really hoping to find some photos online of the completed kit (well, actually of any destroid monster model, not just the Imai kit) but I haven't seen any. I used to refer to the built monster that was up for sale here on Macrossworld, but that's long gone now. The only one I've seen lately is the resin Yellow Sub version done by Fernando Faria. Great stuff, but not exactly what I'm looking for. Any other well-done Monsters in online model galleries or whatnot? (EDIT): My mistake, Fernando says his was the Arii version. Oops.

The Macross episodes used for Robotech were altered to fit the deranged Robotech compilation strategy. Basically, if you watch Robotech you're not getting the real story. The animation's the same, but the folks at Animeigo did a full restoration from an old 16mm print, so it looks a lot better than the Robotech version. As for the movie, it is different from the TV series. It's an alternate version of the story, and told in a couple hours instead of the 12-13 hours the TV series had. It's a very well-done movie, though. It's become one of my favorite anime mecha movies.

The flashback established the Dr. Wily existed and that he and Dr. Light had a rivalry when they were alive. It didn't establish that another Rockman lived back then, or that any of the events from the Rockman games happened around the time X and Zero were on the drawing board. I think really the question was left unanswered. I hardly consider Power Battles an authoritative source, usually the crappier titles in a lineup will do the most damage to sensible continuity. Like I said, it's my personal theory that X is its own continuity. I just think it works better that way. As a series X dropped a lot of the campy elements from the original, and from the opening battles of X1 it told its own story, with no reliance on anything from the Rockman series, just a lot of similarities.

Well, it would have been tough for them to mold-in the scribed lines on the shoulder, because of draft angle issues. I tried adding the lines to the parts before casting them, but I think they were mostly lost through all the sanding sometime between when I scribed the lines and when I made the molds. I think there's still enough of the lines left to use as a guide for rescribing them. I suck at scribing, though.

Megaman zero HARD???? only thing i found hard was keeping a rank above C. Unless Zero 2 is hard I have no clue what you are talking about. As its character designs I HATE zero he doesn't look a THING like zero and his gun its like a pistol. Where's his arm gun? If this didnt have megaman on it, it could pass of as another title. Its called technology I guess. Its been a while since X. And yes... the game was challenging. Its regarded as one of the most challenging games this generation. The only thing I can complain about.... is how the game never tells you what happened to Zero for him to change so much. And considering Capcom never explained how Mega Man evolved to Mega Man X (not the character, but the series) I doubt we will ever know. My personal theories regarding Rockman vs. X and Zero vs. GBA Zero: First, I think the X series is more a retelling of the Rockman story than a sequel. Like Gundam X compared to Gundam - you have a lot of the same events and characters who went through a lot of the same things as in the original Gundam (such as the original pilot of the Gundam X, who was essentially a burnt-out version of Amuro), and of course a new rendition of the Gundam itself - but it's really its own show. I think Rockman X is like that. Dr. Light, Wily, Rock, they all show up in one form or another, even the original bosses (Cutsman->Boomer Kawanger, Ice Man -> Chill Penguin, etc.) could be said to have shown up early on in the series - but everything's given a new interpretation. If you want to consider GBA Zero to be part of the continuity with the X series (which is tough in light of X7), my personal favorite theory is this: the beginning of Rockman Zero was meant to pick up from the end of X5, not X6. At the end of X5, Zero was blown in half and lost, presumed dead. Then at the start of Rockman Zero, the upper half of Zero is found, in some kind of suspended animation - he's reconstructed by the cyber-elf and given one of the handguns carried by the resistance fighters, hence the new look. I think it fits together really well that way - plus X had the Z saber at the end of X5 (which he did in X6, too - meaning that Zero had to have a different saber in that game). This is why I think the events of X5 were meant to be the lead-in to Rockman Zero. But then they made X6 (cheesy recycled crap that it is), Zero shows up and says "Oh, I didn't actually die that time.", and they had to come up with a new excuse to lead in to the GBA games - but meanwhile the original lead-in is still visible in the GBA game. I do think GBA Zero was a cakewalk compared to the old X games... But it's a fantastic game. I think discarding some of the elements of the original games (like the 8-boss/8-weapon system, which never really fit Zero too well) was a great move.

Hey, Since I first got the Hasegawa Battroid, I've generally acknowledged it as the greatest injection-molded mecha kit ever. I love the thing, it's gorgeous, and (apart from some fragility) very well engineered. But lately one thing has come to bother me about the kit: the shoulders. They're very boxy and large compared to the forearms, and apart from the fact that, in principle, they should be the same thickness as the forearm (for transformation reasons) I also think that it doesn't fit the style of the kit to have them that thick. So I reduced the shoulders from 14mm front-to-back thickness down to 12mm: http://1-4-4.home.comcast.net/models/Proje.../1_72_Battroid/ http://1-4-4.home.comcast.net/models/Proje...shoulder1a.jpeg http://1-4-4.home.comcast.net/models/Proje...shoulder1b.jpeg http://1-4-4.home.comcast.net/models/Proje...comparison.jpeg I've been working on this refinement for a while, and just this week I finished making the molds for casting copies of the shoulders. I think they're gonna look nice, and correct one of the vanishingly few problems I have with the kit.

Realistically? Scenario 2, hands down. At some point in the Valkyrie's development they spent some time trying to adapt the design to make a 2-seat version. They created a new nose section with a new cockpit, new head, and the sensor and fire control systems to go with it. That took some work, developing those new systems, making it all work together, still transform properly, and be safe. So their options for the wedding day are either figure out how to put together a whole new type of 2 seater valkyrie using parts from the 1D and 1J, and verify that the result is safe to use, or take one of the 2 seater valkyries they already had, and repaint it. I can't imagine they ever had any need to temporarily convert a normal valk into a 1D, so on the one hand you have a project of reasearch and development, followed by testing, and on the other hand you have the combination of two established, proven technologies: the VF-1D which had already been in service for around a year, and paint. This is all assuming that it's not trivial (and proven safe) to take the nose from a VF-1D and stick it on a VF-1J. I can't imagine why it would be trivial, if it's not something they needed to do it's not something they would have specifically worked into the design plans or testing schedule.

Whatever the reason, a lot of resin kits out there are simply gorgeous, where the injection-molded equivalents (if any) are often bland at best and downright cheesy at worst. I attribute this to the differences in the process: with a resin kit you have a scratchbuilder/sculptor building a model, and then recasting it. Very little consideration is necessary when designing the model to make it castable. On the other hand, injection-molded kits need a lot more consideration to get the same level of quality: parts count has to be higher to account for draft angle/undercut issues, and given the comparatively high cost of producing a mold, it's not as common for an injection-molded kit part to be redesigned if problems were found after the mold was produced. I think the relative simplicity of producing a resin kit is a big factor in why they often look better - the sculptor can refine things, create what they want, and the product of that is exactly what the modeler gets. It's possible for injection-molded kits to be just as good as resin, but in practice it's not that common. In Bandai's case, the injection-molded versions come out sort of cheesy-looking a lot of the time because they apparently don't care about quality of detail, at least in robot kits. They'll dig trenches like canyons and call them panel lines so they can avoid having to complicate the molding, and they'll needlessly split up parts for color, while leaving structural detail areas molded in a minimal number of parts. A lot of MG and PG kits have molded-in cables and such. If you look at Hasegawa, on the other hand, the gap between resin and injection-molded kits isn't as wide. I love resin kits. A while back I got the B-club Gelgoog-J conversion set, that thing is super-pretty. That's pretty much how it goes - having found a few resin kits that really appealed to me, and worked with one of them, I can appreciate resin and justify the cost in those kinds of cases. In other cases, I stick to cheaper options.