Macross Δ (マクロスΔ Makurosu Deruta^?, lit. "Macross Delta") is a science fiction anime television series that aired on Tokyo MX in Japan from April 3, 2016 to September 25, 2016. The fourth television series set in the Macross universe, it is directed by Kenji Yasuda (Arata: The Legend, Noein) and written by Toshizo Nemoto (Log Horizon, Tokyo Majin) with Shōji Kawamori being the chief director and mechanical designer, while Chisato Mita handling the original character design. Kawamori is also credited as the original creator along Studio Nue.

Macross Delta is set in the year 2067, 8 years after the events of Macross Frontier in a remote part of the Milky Way Galaxy called the Brisingr Globular Cluster (ブリージンガル球状星団 Burījingaru Kyūjō Seidan), which is plagued by the Var Syndrome (ヴァールシンドローム Vāru Shindorōmu), a mysterious phenomenon which turns people berserk without any apparent cause. A team of talented idols, the Walküre, uses the power of their songs to calm down the infected by the Var Syndrome, assisted by the Delta Flight, a team of experienced Valkyrie pilots, while facing the interference from the Aerial Knights of the Windermere Kingdom, which found a way to exploit the infection on their favor as part of their plan to resume war against the New United Government (新統合政府 Shin Tōgō-seifu) for control of the Cluster.

This is the initial 2016 release of the Sv-262Hs. I just finished watching the Macross Delta series so have a pretty good idea of where this fits into that particular part of the universe. It is basically the ride of the main 'bad guy', hence the very dark blue and gold scheme. It is also a bit different from the standard Sv-262. It is molded in a very dark blue plastic, again to help with painting (or not as you choose), and I wish it wasn't as dark plastic is a bear to work with.

Like the s-f/fantasy/anime kits that are produced in Japan, this one has an extensive decal sheet that takes care of just about any need to actually paint the kit if you are happy with the color of the plastic. Otherwise, there is some paint mixing in your future if you use the recommended Gunze paints. This blue shade is a mix of FS 15050 dark blue and CR3 which is yellow lacquer. No ratio is provided.

Molding on the kit is superlative. There are a lot of parts, some of them rather small, but then this is not a snap kit. The cockpit section has a nicely done seat and one will actually have to do a bit of surgery to some of the seat parts. This will all fit into the lower fuselage along with the intakes (which are four parts per side) and a couple of exhaust tailpipe constructs. These latter pieces will hold the lone polycaps so that when one installs the tailplanes they can be moved. There is a huge sprue of poly-bits, but you only use a couple of them. The other polycaps fit into the lower fuselage.

There are a considerable number of vent/intakes that fit atop the upper rear fuselage. There are two options for these and I've not a clue what they might represent, but they do need to be attached in a specific order and decaled prior to assembly. After this the nose cone assembly is built. No indication of any weight is provided and the wheelbase is so long that it is not needed.

Next the various wings, and fins are assembled and decaled. This all tells me that one needs to paint this as one goes along.  Where this kit varies from the base model is a set of extended and different shape outer wings. The kit comes with a pilot figure and you can model this gear up. If you choose the gear down option, those are provided and very nicely detailed as well. For the underside there is what appears to be a huge weapon of some sort. Perhaps a rail gun or a particle cannon. This has its own stabilizing fin, which would be folded for modeling the vehicle on its gear. This fits into that poly-cap you installed in the fuselage and has an interchangeable piece so it can be shown either extended or retracted into the shallow weapon's bay. Of course, you can also do an open or closed canopy.

Instructions are very well done with the usual Gunze references and color mixing info, though no ratios. The huge decal sheet has a lot of metallic gold. Now my experience with the base kit and its silver shows that this will be very brittle and difficult to get to form over the various curves that are associated with things like wing leading edges. Decaling will be a very prolonged process.

I ordered this from a shop in Japan after watching the series and while building the earlier variant. Having the experience of that first kit will be a big plus on doing this one. I only hope I don't hose the decals!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macross_Delta

March 2018

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