Bandai 1/60 DX Chogokin Macross Plus YF-21

[no3Ljm]

3 minutes ago, Mog said:

If someone were to improve upon the 1/60 Yammy, they could easily update the elbow articulation without much fuss. 

They would need to figure out a way to make the joints for the hips and the hip-guards stronger.

In order to keep the skinny fighter profile, someone would have to figure out a way to have the legs expand width-wise for Gerwalk/battroid and collapse for fighter mode.  Might have to do some panel-folding to allow the legs to be "thickened."  Also possibly hollow out the bellyplates and underside of the backpack a bit to make a little extra room too.

The tabs on the bellyplates can also be a bit of pain to lock into place for fighter mode.  But the guns can be held on the bellyplates without swapping the actual guns out, and there's a minor cheat to keep the guns held on the FP's.

Lastly a spring and strut could be added to keep the rear landing gears from collapsing when rolling the fighter backwards (at least the landing gear were already painted white before ).

So, there are fixes and improvements that can be made.  But for a 15+ old design, the 1/60 Yammy still holds up well in all three modes.

I was actually waiting for Kurisama back in the day when he mentioned that he might design the Gerwalk/Battroid legs. Technically, make it as a 1/60 partsformer. Which I don't mind as long it has thicker legs. 

So now, the plan is Yamato in Fighter mode, Bandai in Battroid mode.  

[sh9000]

Sweet Battroid pose.

[Lolicon]

15 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

So now, the plan is Yamato in Fighter mode, Bandai in Battroid mode.  

Yep that's the plan for a number of people, it seems.

[M'Kyuun]

18 hours ago, Mog said:

If someone were to improve upon the 1/60 Yammy, they could easily update the elbow articulation without much fuss. 

They would need to figure out a way to make the joints for the hips and the hip-guards stronger.

In order to keep the skinny fighter profile, someone would have to figure out a way to have the legs expand width-wise for Gerwalk/battroid and collapse for fighter mode.  Might have to do some panel-folding to allow the legs to be "thickened."  Also possibly hollow out the bellyplates and underside of the backpack a bit to make a little extra room too.

The tabs on the bellyplates can also be a bit of pain to lock into place for fighter mode.  But the guns can be held on the bellyplates without swapping the actual guns out, and there's a minor cheat to keep the guns held on the FP's.

Lastly a spring and strut could be added to keep the rear landing gears from collapsing when rolling the fighter backwards (at least the landing gear were already painted white before ).

So, there are fixes and improvements that can be made.  But for a 15+ old design, the 1/60 Yammy still holds up well in all three modes.

Yes to all your suggestions. I'd be happy with just better proportioned legs and stronger hip joints, but far be it from me to hinder any attempts at improving articulation throughout and even adding more so long as the joints are strong and well-toleranced. I'm firmly in the camp that would love to see Arcadia apply said fixes to the Yamato design. It would likely require less tooling to accomplish, and they'd still sell it at north of $300 ensuring they made a healthy profit. And we would buy it, many among us buying multiple copies. Seems a sure-fire win for Arcadia if they chose to retrofit the Yammie. Win for us the fans, too.

[Raikkonen]

On 2/6/2024 at 6:20 AM, M'Kyuun said:

I get the feeling that this is going to be one of those divisive toys that inspires conversation for years to come. 

I think only for a few months till the next shipments ring our doorbells, and then will be well forgotten on shelves or in the cupboard. 

On 2/6/2024 at 6:59 AM, jenius said:

As much as I'm looking forward to this, I am REALLY looking forward to the renewal version five years from now. 

The DX v2 after the renewal will be the one to look forward to. 🤣

[PointBlankSniper]

9 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

The DX v2 after the renewal will be the one to look forward to. 🤣

They may as well do that sooner with macross 7 stuff they keep pretending to do, and reinvent canon by making all the massive proportion changes to the VF-22 to explain why it occupies a different number from the prototype. Even all the different versions of the 19 don't get new numbers, so the differences must be massive here 🤪. We can then pretend all the retro morphing animations must have hidden the fact that the 22 had been a different airframe structure from the 21 all along 🙃

[Mog]

You mean the -22 doesn’t use fold technology to store its gunpods internally when not in use?!!11!!!? 🤪

Edited February 7 by Mog

[M'Kyuun]

14 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

The DX v2 after the renewal will be the one to look forward to. 🤣

Oh man, I hope not. I avoided that whole mess with the ver. 1 of the VF-25, which looked terrible to me. I went in on this YF-21, and I hope it's not the same scenario. It's a lot of ducats to drop on a purposely poorly-done first pass. 

[Chronocidal]

Considering how Bandai just completely abandoned the Sv-262, I don't think you have to worry.  They really just don't want to invest in adversaries.

[seti88]

14 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

I think only for a few months till the next shipments ring our doorbells, and then will be well forgotten on shelves or in the cupboard. 

The DX v2 after the renewal will be the one to look forward to. 🤣

😂...or they will implement any improvements into a VF-22 release....and would make this 21 release the one and only ever YF-21 DX for the foreseeable future😆

Still, will wait for the 21 release before jumping to conclusions on its quality etc etc..🤪

[Raikkonen]

17 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

Oh man, I hope not. I avoided that whole mess with the ver. 1 of the VF-25.

Word. I was like nopelandia the moment I saw the V1..

17 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Considering how Bandai just completely abandoned the Sv-262, I don't think you have to worry.  They really just don't want to invest in adversaries.

Oh now, we worry. Bandai always manages to counter whatever good or bad expectations we have. 

17 hours ago, seti88 said:

😂...or they will implement any improvements into a VF-22 release....and would make this 21 release the one and only ever YF-21 DX for the foreseeable future😆

Or just be Bandai and release the ultimate dream 21 via exclusive lottery... 

[YFMATO-21]

New to the boards, but have been following this for awhile (fwiw I own all versions of the Yamato YF-21s, including the 2x 1/72 versions and the 1/60). This has been touched on before, but I just wanted throw my hat in the ring; from what I can gather, the ONLY reason for the massive "platform" separating the backpack is to allow for the wings to fold in at an angle (i.e., 15 degrees or so). If the wings could fold flat, then the backpack could be brought in closer very easily, by simply moving the hinge points for the "platform" higher up along the backpack and the corresponding point on the forward fuselage. This is all completely ridiculous as there appears to be no reason why the wings can't be adjusted to fold flat (similar to the platform, one can simply adjust the hinge locations). I'm flabbergasted by this design.

Also, I can't recall if this was brought up earlier in the discussion, but why not just adjust the 1/60 Yamato design so that larger ankles can fit into hollowed-out engine nacelles?? This would provide the best of both worlds: the beautifully slim fighter profile of the 1/60 Yammy, and the large ankles of the current version. I see no reason why they can't use all that extra space in the nacelles just staring the designers in the face. And yes that would mean delimiter mode would be impacted, as the hollowed out nacelles would be visible in that mode, however you could just have a sliding mechanism to cover it up, or alternatively, folding panels similar to those for the landing gear, except they would fold into the nacelle space when the ankles were slotted in, and fold closed when in delimiter mode. Anyway just my two cents. Enjoying the conversation (and I do have it on preorder... just in case I'm surprised by how it looks in person)

[YFMATO-21]

And just to clarify; if the hinge points for the platform were moved higher up, then the platform itself would be less wide (in terms of the distance between the backpack and the forward fuselage), because the "height" of the hinge is what would define its width.

[snakerbot]

5 hours ago, YFMATO-21 said:

why not just adjust the 1/60 Yamato design so that larger ankles can fit into hollowed-out engine nacelles??

"Just" is doing a whole lot of work in that sentence. The reason is because the Yamato legs are already bigger than the nacelles. Take a look it this image from anymoon.com:

The ankles are very nearly touching each other at the centerline of the plane, but the nacelles are nowhere close to the centerline.

[26662]

2 hours ago, snakerbot said:

"Just" is doing a whole lot of work in that sentence. The reason is because the Yamato legs are already bigger than the nacelles. Take a look it this image from anymoon.com:

The ankles are very nearly touching each other at the centerline of the plane, but the nacelles are nowhere close to the centerline.

Thanks for weighing in.  I can imagine potential solutions that would allow the lower leg to “offset” and partially stow inside the nacelles, but the required engineering isn’t elegant and would likely impact stability in gerwalk and battroid modes at the figure’s current scale.  I won’t be certain until I have the figure in hand, can take some measurements, and see how the backpack is otherwise designed.

[YFMATO-21]

9 hours ago, snakerbot said:

"Just" is doing a whole lot of work in that sentence. The reason is because the Yamato legs are already bigger than the nacelles. Take a look it this image from anymoon.com:

The ankles are very nearly touching each other at the centerline of the plane, but the nacelles are nowhere close to the centerline.

I see your point (and thanks for the images!), however I see a few things that would help: 1) the nacelles on the new Bandai DX design are massive - far larger than the Yamato nacelles, lots of potential cavity space to fit legs/ankles (not in their entirety of course, but enough to allow for a more trim fighter mode);

2) the legs could be oriented straight-on and bend upwards into the nacelle cavity (using the actual knee joint, or even an extra joint): The very first version of the 1/72 Yamato Yf-21 had the legs oriented in the straight-on position I believe, not rotated inwards/more flat, as per the 1/60 Yammy (been awhile since I transformed the first 1/72 version); they didn't bend into the nacelles of course, instead they just caused a bulkier fighter mode with a hefty belly; they issued an update to the 1/72 which finally had the legs oriented "flat", allowing for a thinner fighter profile; Bandai could go with the original 1/72 leg orientation and have the knees bend upwards into the new (larger) nacelles, not completely, but enough to thin out the belly of the plane; this would solve the "centerline" issue you brought up, as the leg thickness would be further away from centerline when the legs are oriented forward;

3) the new trick of folding the feet into the ankles would help out as well, reducing the amount of volume that would have to go into the nacelles.

Edited February 10 by YFMATO-21
Clarification of statement two

[YFMATO-21]

Here's a pic of the 1/72 1st edition (bottom). You can see the different leg orientation. Now just have the legs bend at the knee, upward into the nacelles

[26662]

36 minutes ago, YFMATO-21 said:

Here's a pic of the 1/72 1st edition (bottom). You can see the different leg orientation. Now just have the legs bend at the knee, upward into the nacelles

I don't own the Yamato 1/72s.  I'm confused by the image from Any Moon.  Has a panel been removed from the Yamatos allowing us to see the shoulder pad, arm, and internal sliding mechanism just anterior to the vertical stabilizer?  That hurts my eyes.  Burn that 5#!+ with fire.

[badboy00z]

28 minutes ago, 26662 said:

I don't own the Yamato 1/72s.  I'm confused by the image from Any Moon.  Has a panel been removed from the Yamatos allowing us to see the shoulder pad, arm, and internal sliding mechanism just anterior to the vertical stabilizer?  That hurts my eyes.  Burn that 5#!+ with fire.

That's just how the toy is designed.

[YFMATO-21]

41 minutes ago, 26662 said:

I don't own the Yamato 1/72s.  I'm confused by the image from Any Moon.  Has a panel been removed from the Yamatos allowing us to see the shoulder pad, arm, and internal sliding mechanism just anterior to the vertical stabilizer?  That hurts my eyes.  Burn that 5#!+ with fire.

No panels removed, it was just a hideous first attempt at the YF-21. But that aside, if you retain the idea of forward-oriented legs from the 1/72 1st edition and transfer it to the Bandai DX, but then allow the legs to bend into the larger nacelle cavity, I see that as a solution to the problem of the currently thicc fighter mode tor the Bandai DX...

[26662]

5 minutes ago, badboy00z said:

That's just how the toy is designed.

That's too bad.  I swore off Yamato when they burst onto the scene (or, burst onto my radar) with the VF-1s in the early 2000s because of their design and material choices.  I bought all of the Yamato Macross Plus valks as well but sold all of my Yamatos on eBay within a few months time.  Fast forward to the last couple of years...I thought I heard good things about the 1/72 YF-21.  I'm a little surprised and disappointed by how inelegant fighter mode looks.

 

[Funny story.  As I was prepping my VF-11 for shipping, the hip broke as I was transforming it back to battroid mode to repackage and ship in its original box.  The hip bar sheared off during its 2nd transformation!  Thankfully, the buyer said he didn't mind and still wanted it and didn't even ask for a discount.  If anyone here fits that description, I hope the VF-11 brought you a lot of joy.]

[Froy]

43 minutes ago, 26662 said:

I don't own the Yamato 1/72s.  I'm confused by the image from Any Moon.  Has a panel been removed from the Yamatos allowing us to see the shoulder pad, arm, and internal sliding mechanism just anterior to the vertical stabilizer?  That hurts my eyes.  Burn that 5#!+ with fire.

If I'm correct this one is before the era of the computer designed toys.

 

[26662]

21 minutes ago, YFMATO-21 said:

No panels removed, it was just a hideous first attempt at the YF-21. But that aside, if you retain the idea of forward-oriented legs from the 1/72 1st edition and transfer it to the Bandai DX, but then allow the legs to bend into the larger nacelle cavity, I see that as a solution to the problem of the currently thicc fighter mode tor the Bandai DX...

Utilizing the space inside the nacelles is an interesting idea.  I'm really looking forward to having the 21 in hand and seeing how one could make that a reality.  This would be a radical redesign, but I can also envision how the nacelles could be part of the legs themselves (and actually fold into the legs to preserve the leg's current silhouette).  That could be a more elegant solution than trying to work around the current design constraints.

Edited February 10 by 26662

[26662]

15 minutes ago, Froy said:

If I'm correct this one is before the era of the computer designed toys.

 

I give those early designers *a lot* of credit for being able to actualize their designs and make things work at these small scales.  Sure, concessions were made here and there, but they were still able to produce some real gems.

Edited February 10 by 26662

[Sildani]

I read somewhere a long, long time ago that the sculptor of the 1/72 Yamato toys didn’t really care about the line art, or Macross in general. It was a job, not a passion project. 
 

As for incorporating the nacelles into the leg transformation, I don’t think that would be acceptable because that wouldn’t follow the lineart at all. The only engine bits are in the intakes, for the “pre-compressor” fan, and in the nacelle bulges which house the actual engines, and those incorporate into the backpack, not the legs. If any part of them did go into the legs, you wouldn’t have a delimiter mode. 
 

Perhaps the thing to do would be to have the wings fold flat, if they can, and make modifications to the backpack hinges to allow it to fit more closely to the actual battroid body. Or modify the wing hinges so any impediment they have to fold flat will be eliminated. 

[26662]

38 minutes ago, Sildani said:

I read somewhere a long, long time ago that the sculptor of the 1/72 Yamato toys didn’t really care about the line art, or Macross in general. It was a job, not a passion project. 
 

As for incorporating the nacelles into the leg transformation, I don’t think that would be acceptable because that wouldn’t follow the lineart at all. The only engine bits are in the intakes, for the “pre-compressor” fan, and in the nacelle bulges which house the actual engines, and those incorporate into the backpack, not the legs. If any part of them did go into the legs, you wouldn’t have a delimiter mode. 
 

Perhaps the thing to do would be to have the wings fold flat, if they can, and make modifications to the backpack hinges to allow it to fit more closely to the actual battroid body. Or modify the wing hinges so any impediment they have to fold flat will be eliminated. 

I appreciate your point: I'm an (amateur) engineering nerd and I *love* when my transforming bots make "structural sense" in both/all modes.  To use the nacelles as storage for the legs in fighter mode hurts the logical side of my brain that knows that that's just not possible.  Furthermore, if the nacelles' only function is to serve as a storage bay, surely the YF-21's designers would have made very different design choices - choices that introduced less turbulence and wind resistance.

Edited February 11 by 26662

[Mog]

Trying to find logic in Bandai’s YF-21 design is an exercise in futility.

It seems as if they just thought “thicker legs” and then stopped at doing anything else.

Again the 1/60 Yamato had some innovative design ideas to look good in all three modes.

For a hypothetical ultimate version of the -21, to get a skinny fighter mode profile AND thick legs, you’d have to come up with a way to collapse the leg width in fighter mode (and expand/thicken for Gerwalk/Battroid) and possibly hollow out the nacelles for some extra storage space.

[M'Kyuun]

1 hour ago, Mog said:

Trying to find logic in Bandai’s YF-21 design is an exercise in futility.

It seems as if they just thought “thicker legs” and then stopped at doing anything else.

Again the 1/60 Yamato had some innovative design ideas to look good in all three modes.

For a hypothetical ultimate version of the -21, to get a skinny fighter mode profile AND thick legs, you’d have to come up with a way to collapse the leg width in fighter mode (and expand/thicken for Gerwalk/Battroid) and possibly hollow out the nacelles for some extra storage space.

This. Although it runs counter to Kawamori's line art, which employs copious animation magic to fit the legs, from a toy manufacturer's perspective, the most logical course is to use what space the design allows for, and I think Bandai did well by using the nacelles to that effect. The only other option would be to make the bulbous sides of the lower legs be separate panels that somehow hinge into some other part of the leg bay, a tall order given how cramped said space is. I think orienting the legs straight ahead and placing them in widened nacelles is the best compromise for this design. Kawamori did toymakers no favors, thus necessitating some creative solutions to achieve balance in aesthetics and functionality. Following the line art, I realize, is what most of us die-hards want, but with some of his questionable designs, it becomes necessary to say "F" the line art and go with what works.

[YFMATO-21]

15 minutes ago, M'Kyuun said:

 Following the line art, I realize, is what most of us die-hards want, but with some of his questionable designs, it becomes necessary to say "F" the line art and go with what works.

Exactly. Being able to follow the line art is like icing on the cake. But if the cake itself sucks, who cares about the icing? (cake = a nice looking battroid, fighter, gerwalk) Besides which, I'm suggesting that the position of the legs (bent into the nacelle space) would be only for the fighter mode - in other words, it would be hidden by the belly panels anyway, so technically it would still look like the line art. Then, for delimiter, you'd remove the legs completely, and you could have a sliding panel or folding doors (similar to the front landing gear folding panels) to cover up the hollowed out nacelle space. So you could actually get delimiter to look like the line art as well. The only line art breaking would be the knowledge that the legs weren't tucked away according to the line art rules during fighter.

[YFMATO-21]

5 hours ago, Sildani said:

I read somewhere a long, long time ago that the sculptor of the 1/72 Yamato toys didn’t really care about the line art, or Macross in general. It was a job, not a passion project.

I find this hilarious! Makes total sense now. Just a hired gun doing a job...

[M'Kyuun]

8 minutes ago, YFMATO-21 said:

Exactly. Being able to follow the line art is like icing on the cake. But if the cake itself sucks, who cares about the icing? (cake = a nice looking battroid, fighter, gerwalk) Besides which, I'm suggesting that the position of the legs (bent into the nacelle space) would be only for the fighter mode - in other words, it would be hidden by the belly panels anyway, so technically it would still look like the line art. Then, for delimiter, you'd remove the legs completely, and you could have a sliding panel or folding doors (similar to the front landing gear folding panels) to cover up the hollowed out nacelle space. So you could actually get delimiter to look like the line art as well. The only line art breaking would be the knowledge that the legs weren't tucked away according to the line art rules during fighter.

Couldn't have stated it more succinctly. I think this is the best solution to preserve all three modes in a fully transformable YF-21 toy while maintaining the aesthetics with minimal concessions. To me, the final product and how it looks through the three modes matters more than the methodology of arriving at those modes. When the line art is drawn in a realistic logical fashion without compromise, then follow it; but in the case of the YF-21 and any other number of Kawamori's works, realism and logic give way to artistic license and visual impression over actual feasibility or functionality. In such a case, the toy/model maker should be free to exercise license of their own to make the best looking and functional toy free of the constraints and fudgings of the line art/animation. 

[Shawn]

The original Yamato designers took the Studio Half Eye YF-21 and upscaled it, making toy minded tweaks along the way.

https://macrossworld.com/macross/toys/_toys_she_vs_yamato.htm

You have to be in the mindset of the early 2000s...we had NOTHING for toys except for 1/55 reissues, and tons of expensive Resin kits.

Yamato was a blessing pumping fresh blood into Macross and re-ignited the fandom.

Don't be too terribly hard on the old designs, just look on them with eyes and a mindset 20 years in the past. 

 

[Mog]

Those mid-2000’s were a fun period.  I started out with a Bandai 1/55 reissue, got sidetracked with the Toynami MPC’s 😬, took a chance with the Yamato 1/48’s, and loved all the latter-day color-schemes they surprised us with later on.  You could see what a massive revolution in design it was compared to the 1/55’s and the V1 1/60’s.

Then the various 1/60 Zero and Plus designs came out shortly thereafter.  Yeah, they each had their flaws.  But looking back, the sheer volume of stuff that came out was amazing.

[sh9000]

I still own and love the Yamato 1/60 YF-21.  I'm getting the DX to check out something new.  Preorders not cancelled.

[M'Kyuun]

4 hours ago, Shawn said:

The original Yamato designers took the Studio Half Eye YF-21 and upscaled it, making toy minded tweaks along the way.

https://macrossworld.com/macross/toys/_toys_she_vs_yamato.htm

You have to be in the mindset of the early 2000s...we had NOTHING for toys except for 1/55 reissues, and tons of expensive Resin kits.

Yamato was a blessing pumping fresh blood into Macross and re-ignited the fandom.

Don't be too terribly hard on the old designs, just look on them with eyes and a mindset 20 years in the past. 

 

Because I'm old and remember, I also try to maintain perspective. Prior to Yamato, there was nothing mass market, save for the occasional rerelease of the 1/55 VF-1 or the crappy Toynami toys. The evolution in design from their original 1/72 toys to their 1/60 toys was night and day- hard to believe they came from the same company, so stark were the improvements across the board. I think that was the point where a lot of us started to finally feel spoiled- for better or worse, Yamato was upping their game with each successive release, concentrating on aesthetics and line art accuracy, aircraft realism, complexity, articulation (although their ball joint placements oft left somewhat to be desired), and delivering high end toys of valks that many of us wished for but never imagined we'd get. It was an exciting time to be a Macross fan. I still maintain a small collection of 1/60 Yamato/Arcadia valks on my desk where I get to enjoy them every day. (VF-19S Emerald Force color; VF-17, VF-4 original release, Arcadia YF-19, original Sv-51, VF-11, original VF-0, and Max's VF-1A w/ Super & Strike Parts) Bandai's Worldwide Anniversary Ver. VF-25 is the outlier on my desk, but I love the VF-25, so there you go.