tetsujin

Nice. I just started a Super Battroid myself. I love the Hasegawa Batts, still the best mecha kits ever made. I had been working on some other stuff but there was a model-building event at Anime Boston and I thought it'd be fun to work on a VF-1 Battroid again so I brought that and started working on it - and then didn't want to stop. It's kind of a problem since I'm working on things for the Otakon model contest, I can't really just work on "whatever" and still get done the things I want to get done... But sometimes you just gotta build what you want to build, I guess. Right now I'm obsessing over the hip joints. The original Battroid hips were kind of fragile, of course, (a nice mechanism otherwise, though - I may try them again in a future build) and all the exposed gaps for the polycaps weren't pretty... And then the Super Batt included a simplified, more rugged hip mechanism but it looks kind of ugly, too (largely because they had to fit the new hip joints to the old upper legs) - so I'm working on a new hip joint similar in operation to the Super Batt hips but based on parts from the original Battroid hips - just replacing the polycaps, filling in the gaps and bulking the thing up.

You know, somehow it never even occurred to me to ask this before, but - do these kits come with decals, or stickers? I kind of assumed decals, but looking at the instruction scans it says "marking seals" rather than "slide mark" (maybe that's my answer right there... ) I really hate Bandai sometimes.

For a couple years in the mid 90s, the VF-11, for me, defined awesome. This news is so goddamn cool I could cry.

Options for making the guns poseable: 1: use a ball joint (probably a Yellow Submarine/Hobby Base ball joint, a gray one so it's still opaque if paint scratches off, and attach the socket to the gun and the ball to the pod, rather than the other way around, so that the ball socket itself will fill some of the gap between the gun and the port in which the gun sits... Secure each part of the ball joint with a polycap, in case the ball joint breaks.) 2: use a spherical hinge (like the Kotobukiya HIPS joints) - use a polycap to attach it to the pod, and either glue it into the cannon or use a polycap there, too. The polycap allows the joint to rotate (and, thus, the hinge to bend in different directions) and the spherical joint itself fills the space. 3: various other, simpler (if less durable) options are available, such as armature wire or even just an elastic cord to hold tension...

This is really annoying: Try searching for "VF-25" in the "for sale" forum, for instance. The search will turn up "no results". Not even "the search system is arbitrarily designed to reject searches for terms like those" - no kind of "couldn't do it" message, it returns a message saying the search was successful, with no results. That's nonsense. Of course there are posts in "for sale" that include "VF-25". And while the search string is short, in this context it's actually exactly what you want to search for. Someone may not use terms like "Frontier" or "Messiah" in their post, but they're sure to write in "VF-25".

I don't know; I kind of like it. I think the basic design of the VF-25 lends itself rather nicely to a YF-19-style forward-swept wing, and with the way the canards are placed they shouldn't have to go through any awkward procedure for transformation. I think the relatively sleek fighter mode of the VF-25-style design lends itself really well to this kind of design, too. I love the good ol' YF-19 but the Macross Plus fighters did tend to be rather chunky... I think it's kind of reminiscent of the early "Advanced Valkyrie" designs. I think I'm not too crazy about the engine pods on the wings or the fact that the canards are forward-swept as on the SV-51 - but in general I think it's a nice direction for the VF-25.

Actually, when it comes to the kit itself my intention is to build and paint it... Not too interested in having a clear model, but the decal sheet has potential. What I don't know (apart from speculation) is whether the clear kit will be significantly more annoying to work with than a regular kit in that regard... Like how it behaves with regard to solvent glues and sanding, etc.

Short of time travel, I suppose not... I paid far more than that for my Imai Regult - but in retrospect it's too much to pay for a kit that falls so firmly into the "fixer-upper" category. Old kits should be a bargain and I don't feel like this release is...

Thanks! Interesting... So it's got the emblems and such but it's really up to the modeler to handle things like the yellow/black color boundaries on the SVF-2 or the grays on the 113 (including cutting multiple "UN Spacy" decals to cross that border...) And the "200" marking for SVF-2 doesn't have the yellow drop-shadow, right? How about the kit itself? Do you have it? Did you build it?

Hi, I was wondering if anybody could give me a picture of the decal sheet that comes with the old clear-color releases of the Hasegawa 1:72 VF-1... I'm starting to play around with the idea of doing some Hasegawa Macross kits as non-anime squadrons. What's been driving me mad lately is that I recently saw a picture of those decals, but I can't find it again... I'd also like to know, if anybody's built these clear kits, whether working with the clear plastic is terribly frustrating or if it's OK...

Well, the original Imai Monster sold for, what, 700 yen? And the original Imai Queadluun Rau sold for 700 yen as well, I believe... And in Bandai's latest reissue of the Imai Queadluun Rau, they sold it for 1000 yen - about 50% price increase. So that gives us a rough idea of the cost of a Bandai-reissued Monster. I believe they'll probably increase the price a little more - maybe 1200-1600 yen? It's all speculation, of course... It's true that the old Imai and Arii kits have a lot of problems - and I agree, they're really not well-matched to the expectations of gunpla builders these days. But I would buy and build 'em. I built up an Imai Queadluun Rau - had a few problems with it (the worst: the backpack unit is hollow, built out of two halves - these had a nasty tendency to crack apart under minor stresses... It's something you have to deal with with old kits, the mating surfaces often aren't that good. I've heard it helps to sand the mating surfaces square first.) Now, when I first got the Queadluun Rau kit, I looked at all the things that were wrong... This proportion wrong, that detail poor, whatever - I wanted to correct all that. But years later when I actually built the thing, I just built it straight and gave it the best paint job I could manage. It actually looks quite good, I think. Sometimes just a little TLC and a good paint job can do wonders for a kit that's otherwise basically a lemon. There's a fair number of things I'm not entirely happy about with the Imai Monster (I own two already) and some aspects of the construction are fairly frustrating - but if it really is reissued, I would buy more, for a few reasons: It's cheap It looks pretty good It's in scale with my Nichimo collection It's small enough that I could realistically do a "Daedalus Attack" diorama. I'm the sort of modeler who's willing to deal with some of the frustrations of an old kit. Actually, I like the simplicity of them... New kits tend to introduce all kinds of extra complication (moving internal frame and so on) and a lot of it just isn't necessary. I do feel like there's something nice about dealing with a kit that has just the parts you need to build the subject. Of course, a lot of people don't feel this way about old kits... Like the other Arii and Imai reissues Bandai has done, the Imai Monster isn't for them. But since Bandai already has the tooling, if people will buy it, it makes perfect sense to do a run of the kit...

Have you guys been following the Shizuoka hobby show news? There was a test shot on display of the Imai Destroid Monster (1/200) - so I guess it's probably going to be reissued this year!

It's cheaper than the finished toys, too.. At least, when they're not on sale.

So, today on HLJ I found this thing: Yamato unpainted VF-1S kit On Yamato's site... Looks like their current 1:60 transforming toy, but pressed as an unassembled kit... I'm curious about what material they used (ABS? Vinyl?) and whether this thing will actually lend itself to typical styrene kit modeling techniques (seam treatment, especially) or if it's something strictly for the customizer crowd...

The left hand appears to be from a MG Gundam or GM... v1.0 or v1.5. Don't know about the right hand...

What the hell kind of crazy talk is that? A Hasegawa YF-19 Battroid would rock!

So what I'm hearing here is that you're kind of on the fence with regard to this design...

Well, I believe in fighter mode the YF-19 does have some small gaps around the head... Not gaps big enough to see the whole head (thus, the kit head that looks kind of like a potato) but enough that having at least a decent mock up of the full head is probably worthwhile... So you can see the back of the head and it'll look good, and see little bits of the side and top of the head and see that it at least doesn't terminate in some blank panel...

Then you get to deal with all the wonderful issues that crop up with perfect variable YF-19... Like, the arms and chest occupying some of the same space as the legs when in fighter mode... I've actually got a bit of a dilemma with regard to this kit. I ordered it when I first found out about it - then I meant to cancel the order 'cause I've got too much other stuff going on right now (i.e. Armored Core) and I wanted to save the money... but I guess I forgot to cancel it, 'cause it's on its way. I'm not sure if I should return it or get rid of it, or just build the damn thing. I mean, it's not as though I didn't want the kit - I'm just trying to save money and keep the backlog in check... <sigh>

Hi there - I'm actually looking to strip markings from pre-painted model kits like the Armored Core kits - but I think the process is the same as that used to print markings on the Yamato toys, so with the amount of customization work we see on MW I was hoping someone here might know... Is there a good way to strip this stuff off, apart from just sanding it off? If it were hobby paint, or chrome finish, I would be able to strip it myself using "Easy Lift Off", oven cleaner, automotive degreaser, etc... But so far my efforts to "strip" pre-painted parts chemically has failed, so I'm not sure if it can be done in a way that leaves the plastic intact...

Right, yeah, a 20m Glaug would have to look like the Matchbox version... It's not a good look, really - had I remembered who made that toy I would have even cited it as a flaw in that approach. XD With regard to what we see in the anime - of course it's full of errors that go beyond the fundamental ones that exist in the official stats - but generally they did not convey the Glaug as being over 25m tall, either. So none of the various fixes to the Glaug design (either make it taller, "Matchboxify" it, or make the pilot smaller) really fit the anime. So, to me, making the Glaug taller is probably the best option. But it's not the only option. <shrug> The way I figure it, there are always compromises. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just what one does to turn a good 2-D design into a good model. You compromise the aspects that are less important to you in order to try and emphasize the more important elements of the design. It's a compromise in the sense that something has had to give way in order for you to reach that solution...

Well, no, not quite. See, there's more than one way you can fudge this to make things fit. You can shrink the pilot, you can make the Glaug larger... Or you can make just the pod larger. Now, don't make the mistake here of thinking I advocate this course, or that I think it would be preferable to simply scaling the Glaug up. Personally I think the proportionality of a design trumps logic about how the design should work - which in turn trumps official figures. (And yes, it's a transitive relationship in this case...) If one were to go messing with the proportions of the Glaug just to make the pilot fit without making the Glaug much taller overall, I think the results would be very ugly. My point is simply that a 25m size for the Glaug is neither official nor, strictly speaking, necessary. It is, however, a good compromise given the contradictions at play. Like I said, I don't have a problem with it. Even "purists" have to be realistic about compromise in the face of contradictions, and Cap's work is always fantastic.

Dang - so roughly 25m tall if you scaled it back up to "full size"? The thing could stand in for a Monster... And still the pilot only just fits in there... XD I can really see why they decided not to include the Regult in the Macross movie - though the fact that the DYRL battlesuits were frikkin awesome could be another reason. Though somehow the idea of a Glaug being on par with a Monster in terms of height (if not overall bulk) kind of fits... Even if it's not official I think it works, for reasons I can't readily articulate...

I've been thinking that when I finally do get a VF-25 kit - assuming I don't decide to fix it in one mode or something, it would be fun (or possibly very frustrating) to rig it with magnets and do away with any plastic-on-plastic locking mechanisms... But in planning to fully paint such a kit, one has to wonder if retaining transformation simply isn't worth it.

Yeah, but you haven't mastered any, is what I'm saying. You haven't designed a model kit from nothing and created toolings for the parts, designed box and manual and shipped it to distributors for sale. It's pretty natural that someone in that position wouldn't necessarily be familiar with the kinds of things that can delay a project like this, or even understand what a major undertaking it can (presumably) be to take a design from a kit you've already produced, scale it up by a factor of 1.5, and release a new kit. I don't know the answer to that either, not precisely, but I assume that it's actually a bigger effort than you or I would expect. Really, I don't know the cause of the delay, either. But it does seem like a pretty minor delay, and not inconsistent with the kinds of delays we regularly see with various kit releases. It'll be over before we know it. I don't think this release will include anything apart from the fighter, gunpod, and pilot. I really think they would have been pretty quick to include that information in their product announcement, it would be a major selling point. But it's possible, at least, that that stuff will be coming later... So here's hoping, eh?