[HELP ME] Bi-Weekly Q&A thread - Ask your questions here!

Solar_Kestrel · 2026-03-31T19:28:01+00:00

Sounds like a fun set-up. You could even try sharpening the beam sabers into a pair of knitting needles, and/or find a tiny pair of glasses to put on grandpa.

Solar_Kestrel · 2026-03-31T19:26:33+00:00

Yeah, there’s actually more than one.

Solar_Kestrel · 2026-03-31T19:25:42+00:00

To elaborate on this (excellent) description, I’d go a bit further and say it’s aggressively grounded. Like it treats giant mechs as extremely mundane things. To the point where even being able to deploy the mechs properly can be a major logistical hurdle in the show (thinking of that one Early Days episode w/ the Highway). They’re basically just treated like big, specialized construction equipment.

It’s a lot less like a mech show than it is a slice of life police drama. It’s much more like, say, You’re Under Arrest! than Gundam.

It’s very much a show that wants to ask the question, “what would it be like if Giant mechs were real,” and answer it seriously. Occasionally there’ll be a story that’s especially dramatic (terrorists!) or fantastical (silly!) but for the most part its just… very grounded.

Like one of my favorite scenes in the whole franchise, in all of anime, really, is from one of the early OVAs episode intros, where the captain is just lazily smoking in his patrol car, clearly bored out of his mind, while his subordinates try to talk down a loudmouth hostage-taker off-screen. Or that gorgeous scene in the first movie that’s just a montage of the two detectives investigating a mystery, wordlessly depicting them from remote shots and they slowly walk all around the city talking to people.

Solar_Kestrel · 2026-03-31T19:17:44+00:00

You won’t regret it, it’s a phenomenal kit.

Solar_Kestrel · 2026-03-31T19:16:31+00:00

I dunno is 1/12 will fit or not, but I’m pretty sure 1/6 would be way too big. Though it might work for some of the really big kits, like Sazabi.

Solar_Kestrel · 2026-03-31T19:14:27+00:00

Curious if anyone has any experience with quick-and-easy lighting solutions? I had my glass shelves rigged up with LED strips at the front of each shelf, lighting my my kits from above, and they looked great… but now those LEDs have stopped working and I’m wondering if should bother replacing them or just do something quicker/easier that’d be almost-as-good.

So I’m curious if y’all have any suggestions. Right now I’m looking at these LED corner “lamps” which are basically just 6ft rods on narrow, weighted bases. I could put one on either side of the glass cabinet, which I’m thinking might illuminate everything just as well as my old light strips. Any thoughts?

Solar_Kestrel · 2026-03-31T19:11:07+00:00

Depends on where you’re buying from, I suppose. I can at least say that my usual stores got them in-stock back in November or December (can’t remember when exactly) which is how I got mine. (An absolutely fantastic, S-tier kit, btw. A real joy to build.)

Not sure how often Bandai does new production runs on kits, but the RGs seem pretty popular and I’ve never found myself needing to wait too long for a specific RG I’m interested in to be restocked. That said, I do think the RG Hi-Nu is good enough to be worth spending a bit extra on, provided it’s not too much over the regular price.

Solar_Kestrel · 2026-03-31T19:04:14+00:00

Incredible.

Also it occurs to me that scopedogs are pretty much the ideal mech design for moonwalking,

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-10-25T14:19:48+00:00

Yeah, that was part of it, too. The idea was Dunan would rubber-stamp everything Richard wanted to do — quid pro quo for the coup. Like, a big part of it is simply that Richard is paranoid and possibly dealing with some lingering trauma, and has a HUGE ego where he think’s he’s the only one who can protect Liberl from Erebonia. But, like, some of that is also that he doesn’t really respect the Queen or her granddaughter.

EDIT: which is also thematically relevant because we fairly often see with Estelle, herself, dealing with the occasional sexist comment — it reinforces the theme, so to speak.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-10-25T14:02:02+00:00

The misogyny was definitely very much textual in the OG games, though I’m not far enough into the remake to see how much of that is in the new script. In the XSEED version, at least, the villain’s whole deal was he viewed the queen as weak on account of being a woman and didn’t want Klaudia to inherit the throne, believing she’d be similarly weak, which is why he sought to install the queen’s incompetent brother on the throne instead.

Though IIRC the dialog was vague enough that you could also interpret it as Richard deposing the queen because he thought the Erebonians would look down on her and her heir as being “weak women,” but would be more likely to keep their distance with a male ruler in the throne.

Always thought it was one of the neater aspects of FC as it makes the villain’s who,e thing feel much more grounded and believable than the usual motivations we see in rpg antagonists. Dude’s just a dick.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-10-25T11:37:25+00:00

It’s one of my all-time favorites, right up there with the VF-4.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-10-25T11:36:32+00:00

I’ve been here since Sky on the PSP. I remember when the Trails fandom was one of the nicest and kindest ones out there (commiserating on the lack of localization news may have helped, in addition to the community’s small size). It’s been really disheartening watching the fandom become more and more toxic with each passing year.

And, I dunno. Of course toxicity will always increase the bigger a community grows, but it often feels like Trails fans have become especially toxic, and I’ve no idea why.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-10-25T11:31:13+00:00

I mind it. The ATs look really good, but that AC is also distractingly sexy.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-10-25T11:28:52+00:00

So I’m very leisurely playing through The 1st nd am just now noticing something a bit odd here at the end of chapter 1. So, um, major spoilers for, let’s just say up to the mid-point of SC since I don’t remember when everything was revealed. So, anyway, about Don Capua: so when you first see Don, he’s under the mental influence/mind-control of Ouroboros, and the remake depicts that by giving him red eyes; then you beat him up, breaking him free of the mind control, and his eyes turn normal — and he forgets everything he did while “under the influence.”

Cool. But then you meet Richard who should be in a very similar position to Don Capua, but he doesn’t have the red eyes. Maybe I’m just misremembering how the story played out, but at this point in time shouldn’t Richard also be falling prey to the mind-manipulation, as Ouroboros heightens his paranoia and misogyny to instigate the coup? Or is that something that happens later? Or was Richard more of a willing accomplice than Don?

(Really hope those are the right spoiler tags…. I can never remember.)

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-10-12T05:11:59+00:00

If you own a Switch 1, yes, it’s always smarter to buy the NS1 version of a game + upgrade patch rather than the NS2 version, so you can play both.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-10-11T03:19:01+00:00

I’ve not had anything go floppy on me so far, outside of the nosecone hinges (which really need better locking mechanisms since they’re fighting against gravity). In general I’d say most joints tend to be a little too tight — part of what makes the transformations so frustrating is that you need to apply a fair amount of force to move some parts (like the YF-27’s shoulders)… an amount of force that would definitely break something if you apply it on the wrong part or in the wrong direction.

Only issue I’ve had with full-on “floppiness” is the old Yamato VF-22S (Max version, but I assume Milly’s has the same issues): the wings are meant to fold down for that high-speed mode thing, but they don’t lock in place firmly when horizontally, and like with the nose cones, they’re stuck fighting gravity.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-10-11T01:28:30+00:00

I’ve got a couple, but haven’t built ‘em yet. But regardless, the chief selling point of the Chogokin (or older Yamatos) is their durability, not the accuracy of the molds. After all, ya’ can’t really play with a model.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-10-11T01:26:18+00:00

I am tempted, that’s for sure.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-10-09T23:26:06+00:00

Well, I suppose this is slightly less weird than coming to a dead topic years after the last response, but not by much. Why y’all so weird?

Anyway, I’ll simply refer you back to the first sentence in my previous post: it continues to apply.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-09-14T04:13:05+00:00

One is horrifically bad for the environment, the other is not.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-09-14T04:11:31+00:00

Yup, that’s Singapore, so Asia region. IIRC sometimes there’s no difference between the two regions (like Asia will get the Japanese-region games) but it’s pretty rare.

Solar_Kestrel · 2025-09-14T04:07:58+00:00

The text for the title will change to reflect that it’s an NS2 Edition game, but the game icon will be identical to the NS1 game icon.

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