Got this delivered finally haha, box was bigger than expected! Prob cos of the FAST packs. This version of the VF-19 appeared in the second Macross Frontier movie... for all of 2 secconds. Well, that's Bandai for you! :p First impressions hmmm.. the color is nicer than the Arcadia version i feel, it has a matte surface and whereas the plastic for the Arcadia version is slightly lighter in tone.
Out of the box, fighter mode looks great, especially with all the tampo printing! The arcadia one has very very little, so booooo for that. However, the fighter mode is a bit ''gappy" compared to the Arcadia version. Proportions seems ok to me for both though!
Transformation is moderately difficult, cos of some tight joints and lots of little flaps here and there, but not impossible, and the instructions were pretty clear. One thing that bugged me though was the neck flap that was a swappable part.... wonder why it couldn't be integrated into the design, since it's part of the shield?
In Gerwalk and bot modes, there are tabs to lock everything in place, so no floppiness! Also, tight joints! So it's a double edged sword haha.
Amazing how far we've come from the first YF-19 released by Yamato in 2000... 15 years ago... wow. :p Since then we've had many versions and variants by Bandai, Yamato/Arcadia, but i think they've finally perfected the design. :)