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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.

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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.

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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.