My Lum strap on my phone is getting old and discolored. I have a choice between Minmay and Hikaru. Which to choose?
Arii 1:100 scale Macross Super Valkyrie VF-1S plamo box scan
Arii’s 1:100 scale model of Roy Fokker’s VF-1S. Well, actually Hikaru is piloting it at this point in the story. It’s rather nice box art, but notice that the thruster pod in the center is facing the wrong direction! Oops. The decals for this kit do not seem to be usable. I am thinking I might build this up as Jetfire from Transformers instead. I have plenty of Autobot emblem decals to use.
Arii’s old 1:100 Heavy Missile Regult battle pod plamo from Macross complete
I had posted a scan of the box art in an earlier post.
I completed the old 1:100 Arii Heavy Missile Regult plamo this week. Surface detail is in some ways better than the old Imai kit, with how there is molded detail for the lights on the head for this smaller Arii kit, whereas Imai’s larger Regult model only provides decals to represent those lights. As it is though, proportions on the missile pods is off and makes the model look a bit awkward because they are too large. I drilled out the cannons because those parts instead had protruding ends rather than resembling actual gun barrells. I used Wave’s H-Eyes parts for lenses and Kotobukiya’s M.S.G. verniers for the thrusters. This kit has molded detail for the lights on the feet, but they protrude way too much. I cut them off and used Wave’s lenses instead. The mono eye is simply molded into the face of the pod, so I first painted it silver and then clear red to give it more of a lens look.
I used Mr. Color 323 Light blue and 311 Gray for the white parts. The gray was a mixture of 32 Dark Gray and 72 Intermediate Blue. the decals were still usable after all these years. They were a bit yellowed, but I taped them to my window for several days to bleach them. They went on fairly well. I have a pre-order for the 1:72 Hasegawa version of this kit, which will be released after the first of September.
The proportions on the Regult itself seem fine, but Arii made the missile pods a bit too tall. It makes the model look a bit awkward. Also, there is no ball socket articulation with the cannons. They must be glued into place. I might add a bit of weathering to this. One thing I need to do is repair the knee joint. I had to replace the broken piece with brass rod, but the 2-part epoxy putty I used turned out to be soft because I didn’t make it the proper ratio. I might try polyester putty instead.
Macross: Do You Remember Love? (animated .GIF montage)
I love this movie…
Manga drawing my student Miho gave me!
Tonight I was very moved! It was the last night for the adult English class, at the end of the 15 weeks of lessons we’ve had together. Miho-san is a quiet woman who did not speak English much, but she became very interested in learning about my incredible love story, of how I came to fall in love with my pen pal Mayu and married her. She was very moved with how I was a shy nerd/otaku type who married his Japanese pen pal.
Miho-san said that she’s just been preoccupied with raising her children to adulthood that she never thought much about having a hobby, but she said that I helped inspire her to reach back to her old hobby of drawing anime/manga characters. She’d shown me a beautiful picture of Maetel she’d drawn a long time ago. For me tonight, she gave me a booklet with two sketches of Minmay from Macross and Lum from Urusei Yatsura. I was so happy and almost started to cry! Miho-san is an excellent artist! Thank you, Miho-san. These sketches are my new treasures.
This is a photo I took of a watercolor painting of Maetel that Miho-san showed me. She is rather talented.
Macross Regult heavy missile battlepod plamo by Arii
I started working on this old 1:100 scale Regult Heavy Missle Carrier plamo by Arii yesterday. Hasegawa is releasing 1:72 versions of Regults, with the standard and the light missile variant. I’m sure next year they will make this heavy missile variant too. I’m sure they will have a 1:72 Glaug officer’s pod eventually too. Back in the day, Arii made a 1:72 Glaug while Imai made a 1:100 one. Bandai has repopped the Imai molds, but the larger Arii kit is a thing of the past and must go for a lot of money.
Armored Valkyrie plamo kits
I’m currently building Hasegawa’s 1:72 scale Armored Valkyrie Battroid kit and featuring it on my YouTube channel. Although I may not buy them, Hasegawa is already releasing variants on this kit, which is cool.
Imai did the same back in the ’80s. I have their standard VF-1J Armored Valkyrie kit in 1:100 scale, but they made others. from Macross. The artwork on these old model kits from the ’80s were fantastic and unfortunately once built, these models never really look as great as the box art. I found these box scans on the old legacy Macrossworld site.
Imai 1:100 scale Armored VF-1S Valkyrie Battroid. Macross fans will notice that an Armored VF-1S was never seen in either the TV show or the movie. This is an original design. Check out the cool “nose art” on the leg! I don’t have this kit, so I cannot confirm if it comes with a decal for that.
Another design not seen in the show or the movie: a VF-1A Armored Valkyrie. Neat stuff.