Bandai 1/60 DX Chogokin Macross Plus YF-21

[Alex GS]

39 minutes ago, Reïvaj said:

続いて企画担当からはついにお披露目された「DX超合金 YF-21」についても語られました。「DX超合金 YF-21」は現在、河森正治氏監督の監修をいただきながら絶賛開発中。何度か試作を重ねており既に“Ver.4”とも言える段階ですが、発売は未定。「来年には皆様に発表できるといいのですが……」とのこと。

Next, the planning staff also talked about “DX Chogokin YF-21” that was finally unveiled.“DX Chogokin YF-21” is currently under development with supervision by Mr. Shoji Kawamori. It has been prototyped several times and is already at the stage of “Ver.4”, but the release is undecided. “I hope to be able to announce it to everyone next year ...”.

SOURCE

Awesome!, thanks for the info, also it seems they are indeed releasing the DX YF-29 sometime in the future.

[Reïvaj]

5 minutes ago, Alex GS said:

Awesome!, thanks for the info, also it seems they are indeed releasing the DX YF-29 sometime in the future.

Apparently with a subtle difference. For what I can see, they won't be using glossy plastic anymore...

[Sanity is Optional]

57 minutes ago, Reïvaj said:

Apparently with a subtle difference. For what I can see, they won't be using glossy plastic anymore...

Well, I guess that means I need to get one. 

[Reïvaj]

After the cool comparison pics @valharyposted, I've been fiddling around with some other photos and Photoshop and came up with these ones for you guys to enjoy...

More pics to come later...

Credits to @valhary, @jenius (Anymoon.com), @Actar and MMM.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Reïvaj
Credits added

[DYRL VF-1S]

4 hours ago, Reïvaj said:

続いて企画担当からはついにお披露目された「DX超合金 YF-21」についても語られました。「DX超合金 YF-21」は現在、河森正治氏監督の監修をいただきながら絶賛開発中。何度か試作を重ねており既に“Ver.4”とも言える段階ですが、発売は未定。「来年には皆様に発表できるといいのですが……」とのこと。

Next, the planning staff also talked about “DX Chogokin YF-21” that was finally unveiled.“DX Chogokin YF-21” is currently under development with supervision by Mr. Shoji Kawamori. It has been prototyped several times and is already at the stage of “Ver.4”, but the release is undecided. “I hope to be able to announce it to everyone next year ...”.

SOURCE

It also looks like they’re looking at gimmicks for the VF-1 Strike parts? Maybe like KC.

Also, if there is a reverse question to the customer such as “If you want a super-DX VF-1 with sound and light gimmicks coming out?”

[Chronocidal]

You know what is amusing to me.. No one seems to be able to get the shape of the tails right.  They're clipped, MiG-style.  Yamato kinda skimped on the angle, but Bandai's flat out ignoring it, which is all the more ridiculous when you remember that the tails contribute absolutely zero influence to the transformation.  They hang out on the arms and do literally nothing.  Also, kind of painful that they literally cut the rudder in half.  I have no idea why they even bothered to include those, but again, the tails have no bearing on anything else on the design, so why not do them correctly?  

Honestly.. the Bandai one just looks all kinds of mis-proportioned.  It's go so much junk in the trunk, it throws the entire rest of the plane out of scale.  That's like a 1/48th backend on a 1/72 front.  

It's not helping that the angle of that "side view" isn't straight-on though.  I'll be interested to see a dead even comparison.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Chronocidal

[sqidd]

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

 

It's not helping that the angle of that "side view" isn't straight-on though.  I'll be interested to see a dead even comparison.

This is key. I think it looks weird because of that. The cockpit section will absolutely look bigger straight on from the side.

[Reïvaj]

I've got that picture, but it still needs some edition. It really only looks a tiny little better, the nose cone is definitely shorter because of the longer legs.

[Chronocidal]

I imagine yeah, it'll help a bit, but the whole design is just really front-loaded, like someone grabbed the midbody and yanked it toward the nose.

[chyll2]

9 hours ago, Reïvaj said:

Apparently with a subtle difference. For what I can see, they won't be using glossy plastic anymore...

OT: That it inself is a good reason to get an extra with a close to SRP pricing of the bundle (the Super part for it is RIDICULOUS),

[seti88]

9 hours ago, Reïvaj said:

After the cool comparison pics @valharyposted, I've been fiddling around with some other photos and Photoshop and came up with these ones for you guys to enjoy...

 

More pics to come later...

Credits to @valhary, @jenius (Anymoon.com), @Actar and MMM.

 

Dear BANDAI, i hope you NOTICED that the small "21" tampo on one of the engine intakes is BACKWARDS.....

dont repeat the SWS oops i mean......SMS tampo on the 29...

[505thAirborne]

 

So far IMO the Yamato still looks a lot better in fighter mode. The Bandai still needs some work. 

[Vi-RS]

26 minutes ago, 505thAirborne said:

 

So far IMO the Yamato still looks a lot better in fighter mode. The Bandai still needs some work. 

The angle of the Bandai one in the picture is way too off, so I'll wait until we can see the actual side profile.

[aurance]

53 minutes ago, seti88 said:

 

Dear BANDAI, i hope you NOTICED that the small "21" tampo on one of the engine intakes is BACKWARDS.....

dont repeat the SWS oops i mean......SMS tampo on the 29...

That’s just a mirror photoshop for the most part.

[Sanity is Optional]

Also I'll point out that you're comparing it to the lineart, which may or may not be accurate to the way Kawamori actually wants it to look.

I'm fine with getting a reimagining which more closely matches what he intended to portray in the OVA/movie.

[Reïvaj]

Here we go guys. Please excuse the low resolution of the new pic, I didn't have anything sharper. Proportions of the actual side profile do look better. Please notice that just like in the previous pics I've closed the gap between the belly plate and the mid body.

[Mommar]

The body is still mashed forward.  Look how far up those intakes and wing roots are.

[Dobber]

It looks marginally better, but still FAR too bulky in the rear and misproportion in the front as others have pointed out. I hope they are still working out major structural issues and not just fine details.

Chris

Edited November 11, 2019 by Dobber

[505thAirborne]

58 minutes ago, Mommar said:

The body is still mashed forward.  Look how far up those intakes and wing roots are.

This.

[Reïvaj]

Longer legs = Shorter nose cone

Fatter legs = Fatter arse. 

No logical reason  = tiny arms and hands and extremely line art inaccurate belly plates.

Decisions, decisions...

[derex3592]

Keeping my Yammy for fighter mode cause yeh....they nailed it closer than Bandai did 10 years later! LOL! 

[Bolt]

I would be surprised if they changed much at this point. But one can always hope. I'm sure it's going to be beautiful when it's in your hands. Personally, i love all the tampo. Still , I'm quite satisfied with my Yammy 21&22.

[HardlyNever]

I'd still buy it.  I think Bandai is prioritizing battroid mode with this particular design.  I think the Yamato's feet and legs are ridiculously tiny, so I'd be happy to see Bandai improve that, and it looks like they have.

The line-art and what we see in animation for the yf-21 are impossible to create in a 3D (near) perfect transformation toy, and we just have to accept that.  I'm not saying Bandai can't do better than what we are seeing right now, but compromises will be made, usually at the cost of a specific mode.  This is true (to some degree or another) of all the pre-CAD valks.  

I do think that they intakes are a bit too far forward in fighter mode, even when accounting for anime magic, so I'd like them to try to push them back a little bit, even if they can't get it line-art accurate.  But I think what we're seeing now is not far off from what we'll end up getting, otherwise they wouldn't have revealed it.

[Chronocidal]

16 hours ago, Sanity is Optional said:

Also I'll point out that you're comparing it to the lineart, which may or may not be accurate to the way Kawamori actually wants it to look.

I'm fine with getting a reimagining which more closely matches what he intended to portray in the OVA/movie.

Forgive me for the confusion, but I have to ask what you mean by this.  We're comparing it to lineart that, for the most part, Kawamori drew.  The big differences we're all pointing out are between how it was drawn both on-screen and in the lineart, and how Bandai has interpreted it. 

It's entirely possible that Kawamori is flip-flopping on how he wants it to look, but to say that the art that Kawamori himself drew isn't how he wanted it to look is a bit goofy.  Also keep in mind that, historically, Kawamori doesn't appear to really have that much input on final designs.

2 hours ago, HardlyNever said:

I'd still buy it.  I think Bandai is prioritizing battroid mode with this particular design.  I think the Yamato's feet and legs are ridiculously tiny, so I'd be happy to see Bandai improve that, and it looks like they have.

The line-art and what we see in animation for the yf-21 are impossible to create in a 3D (near) perfect transformation toy, and we just have to accept that.  I'm not saying Bandai can't do better than what we are seeing right now, but compromises will be made, usually at the cost of a specific mode.  This is true (to some degree or another) of all the pre-CAD valks.  

I do think that they intakes are a bit too far forward in fighter mode, even when accounting for anime magic, so I'd like them to try to push them back a little bit, even if they can't get it line-art accurate.  But I think what we're seeing now is not far off from what we'll end up getting, otherwise they wouldn't have revealed it.

If Bandai is prioritizing the battroid mode, then they had better beef up those spaghetti arms before the Yamato sucker punches the Bandai version and steals all its lunch money.

Literally the only improvement I see on the Bandai version is the legs.  That's it.  Otherwise, the battroid looks just as misproportioned as the fighter mode.  What that comes off as is basically sacrificing every other aspect of both battroid and fighter to get bigger legs in.  That's a sucky compromise in my book, and I absolutely think they could balance the sacrifices better to improve the rest of the valk, even if it means slightly shrinking the legs.

As it is now, I'm considering buying a second Yamato to slap the Bandai legs on, and just never transform it out of battroid.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Chronocidal

[jenius]

Though it may seem a sucky compromise to get bigger legs, it's worth noting that bigger legs may mean a world to this toy in terms of handling. Bandai might be prioritizing making a stable, possibly even fun to handle, battroid toy over slavishness to the line art. They might be sitting around going "if we don't worry too much about the shape of this part, we could change this joint so the toy can pull off this pose!" 

Or they could be inept. We'll find out later.

[Chronocidal]

I mean, if it makes it fun to pose, that's great, but at some point you have to address the aesthetics, or it's going to be shoved in a corner and forgotten for being an incredibly dynamic turd.    Right now, it looks like their thought process was, "If we ignore how the rest of the plane and battroid look, we can actually give it some screen-accurate legs!"

[spanner]

really wanted to limit my stuff to 1:48 only but I'm thinking I'll get one of these to go with my DX YF-19. It is certainly looking pretty good! 

[Sanity is Optional]

Different people, different priorities.

I'll take posability and good transformation/good handling over line-art accuracy any day.

[sqidd]

12 minutes ago, Sanity is Optional said:

Different people, different priorities.

I'll take posability and good transformation/good handling over line-art accuracy any day.

To me that translates into "good engineering". Which is something that I enjoy.

I'm generally a function over form kinda guy.

[Reïvaj]

IMO line-art accuracy is what takes most of the "good engineering" with these pre-CAD valks.

[Vi-RS]

With these transforming macross toys that we've seen over the years, the key is always finding the balance between fighter and battroid modes with the good engineering that each manufacturer has at its time.

 

[Mommar]

The only realistic way to get a proper 21 in Fighter and Battroid is to provide swappable legs (probably arms too.)  There's no physical reality where that plane can become that Battroid.

[Slave IV]

I have never once spent any time comparing my toys to lineart and worried about how it matches up. As long as it is a good toy and it is obviously designed to represent something I like, I'm good. So far, this looks good to me but have to see more to be sure.

[Knight26]

The issue with creating a lineart accurate YF-21 is one of materials.  The animation clearly shows the YF-21 using a morphing wing, which I always assumed extended to other parts of the Valkyrie as well, the legs and arms in particular.  Short of finding a way to make the legs, and to a lesser extent the arms, morphic, to lay flatter or shrink, any perfect transformation YF-21 will end up having fuselage proportions that do not match the lineart.

Yamato's solution to the foreward fuselage and chest length issue was great, but was a design concession.  
Bandai's shortening of the nose and cockpit to give a longer fuselage, and therefore longer legs is another design concession.  

I would be perfectly happy with a non-perfect transformation version, with arms and legs that swap in, if it means we get a YF-21 that looks correct in all modes.

[Berkut]

4 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

The issue with creating a lineart accurate YF-21 is one of materials.  The animation clearly shows the YF-21 using a morphing wing, which I always assumed extended to other parts of the Valkyrie as well, the legs and arms in particular.  Short of finding a way to make the legs, and to a lesser extent the arms, morphic, to lay flatter or shrink, any perfect transformation YF-21 will end up having fuselage proportions that do not match the lineart.

Yamato's solution to the foreward fuselage and chest length issue was great, but was a design concession.  
Bandai's shortening of the nose and cockpit to give a longer fuselage, and therefore longer legs is another design concession.  

I would be perfectly happy with a non-perfect transformation version, with arms and legs that swap in, if it means we get a YF-21 that looks correct in all modes.

Thats what I think too, I do think Bandai has room to extend the nose cone and correct cockpit shape even though it'll be slightly off-scale from the linearts/technical specifications. Its crazy this is a ver.4 so maybe by early next year they will have a ver 5 and 6 ready to display at the WonFest maybe or next Tamashii Nation/Shizuoka Hobby show event.