Lord Rahl of Clannad

As I had hoped, the Lair is also looking brilliant. It may be rather monochromatic, but it is in the sewers so this is somewhat understandable. The Turtle designs continue to impress me; I really like how they gave Donatello goggles to add more to him. Shredder looks amazing (as was to be expected) and Splinter looks good enough. I'd be lying if I said that Splinter is as I had expected or hoped, but the design they have gone with is perfectly fine IMO. Overall, these movie sets make for a great wave. Hopefully the movie is just as good.

I personally heard nothing about a fourth undisclosed GotG set. The three sets that we have pictures of now were the only ones I ever heard anything about. The only other Marvel set for the Summer wave is that X-Men set that is very, very loosely based on DoFP.

American Authors - Home

My anime adventures have continued. Since I finished Clannad and Clannad: After Story, I have mostly been trying to watch shorter series for a while. Of course, I haven't been 100% successful in doing so, but it has continued to be fun regardless. I first went onto Sankarea: Undying Love after Clannd: After Story. It was a strange series, using the unusual premise of a guy who is obsessed with zombies and wanting a zombie girlfriend getting the latter and living life in such circumstances. Naturally, this poses challenges such as rigor mortis and preventing her body from decomposing, which does take up a lot of the series. It doesn't just focus on that though. The other main essential plot element is the girl's extremely overprotective father who wants to get his daughter back even though she is a zombie and basically hates him. Some elements of the plot make absolutely no sense, and there were a couple of filler episodes too. Not only that, but the series doesn't really have much of a proper ending; it was apparently cut off when at some random point from the manga, for whatever reason. Overall, it was a surprisingly good series, even considering the gripes I had with certain aspects of it. Next was another shorter series called Girls Und Panzer. I've come across many unusual premises for anime stories, but this has to be one of the most unusual yet. The main one which was odder was The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, though I'll say more on those momentarily. Basically, Girls Und Panzer is set in a world where schools (for some reason built on aircraft carriers) battle each other with tanks for an extra-curricular activity. It sounds ridiculous, and I suppose it is, but it works surprisingly well and is actually a pretty good series. Next was Sword Art Online. This was a great series, though was slightly let down by the second half of the series. The characters in the series were all excellent and many were very well developed. The series generally avoided filler and fan service, but these do creep in to almost any anime. There was a well constructed and powerful love story intertwined with the peril of the series, though the main female character was reduced to being some sort of prize in the second half of the series. That was the main disappointment of the second half, though it was also slightly more disappointing due to the sense of peril mostly being removed, among other things (e.g. the campy tone of the second half and the characters weren't as good). Overall it was a very impressive series, despite the second half somewhat dropping the ball in terms of quality. Then I moved onto Another. I went into this really not knowing what to expect, so I was surprised to find it was a horror anime with a hint of mystery and a tone somewhat similar to detective shows (in places anyway). Naturally, it wasn't always easy to follow everything that was happening, but it was an entertaining challenge. The characters were great, and the character deaths that were a constant of the series kept things interesting and maintained the sinister tone and kept paranoia as part of the tone as well. This was also surprisingly good, even if I felt the development of the relationship between the two main characters would have been nice. Then was The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. I'm not going to say too much about these, but I will say that I felt this series was somewhat over-rated. The characters, despite being undeniable stereotypes, were very well developed and kept things interesting. The plot was extremely weird, too weird for me to even try to explain. You really need to watch it to get it. In terms of episodes, I thought they were good enough; there wasn't too much filler. However, I nearly went mad during the "Endless Eight" arc. The person who thought it was a good idea was clearly insane. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya was a good movie, even if it was almost 3 hours long. But the length made sense, so I can't complain too much. I'm disappointed they never really developed a romantic thing between the two main characters, but it doesn't matter too much. I'm on K-On now. It seems entertaining enough, but I'll have to watch more to be sure.

I'm surprised that we've had pictures emerge now. Not that I'm complaining about that, even if I do think it is odd that there aren't any images of the new lair yet. The Turtle Van Takedown is quite a nice build; it certainly looks far more coherent than the Shellraiser from the TV series (which I do quite like the design of). I am surprised how much I like the new Foot Soldier design, though I find the inclusion of the seemingly generic person to be odd (I suppose that he is supposed to be Vernon Fenwick or something?). The Big Rig Snow Getaway is certainly a generic build, but it isn't a bad build as a result of this. Both vehicles are well-built, even if I struggle to see how they make sense for TMNT (I guess that the movie will explain that much). The April O'Neill/Megan Fox minifigure is good in almost every way, and would actually be damn near perfect were it not for the face having cheekbones. Considering how bad cheekbones make minifigures look (more often than not) I fail to see why LEGO insist on using them. Karai isn't too bad, though I had expected far better for some reason. As for the Turtles (this applies to both sets), as with the movie itself from what we have been shown so far, I have no issues with the designs of the Turtles. Actually, I sort of like them, mainly because of the higher amount of variety in comparison to the TV show Turtles. I like how the Turtle designs work to reflect each Turtles' personality, and I'm glad that their minifigures successfully replicate this. Now here's hoping we get pictures of the lair sooner rather than later.

Well that trailer isn't exactly much for us to go on, but it's certainly somewhere to start. This looks interesting so far, so hopefully we get a more "full" trailer soon so we can get more of an idea what this film is really all about. Shredder looks awesome, and the Turtles look far better now that we have seen them in action. I also noticed the TCRI canister in the trailer as well, which makes me wonder how important the Kraang are going to be for the plot of the movie. Hopefully the arrival of this trailer means that set images aren't too far away either.

Very observant of you to notice that. I've not noticed it until now, and I've seen numerous close-up images of it on here. It's a nice piece of detailing by TLG, and is definitely better than having extra arms on the minifigure.

Wow. These couldn't have possibly been any better. All of them are excellently designed, and the character accessories are pure genius for a lot of the characters. I'm particularly liking Mr Burns and his fish bowl, though these are all excellent minifigures. I can't wait for them to be released so I can work on getting them all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHT2qCqoTH0&list=PLy31tMdfMH671fCDLJfEHnaCoIUwpqe5z&index=10 Passenger - Golden Leaves One of the songs from Passenger's upcoming album (it is called Whispers) that is slated for release on the 9th of June.

Wow. Karai looks even more impressive up close like that. I'm really liking the detailing on the torso, and that hairpiece is just brilliant. I can't wait to be able to get my hands on this set.

That Ultron looks awesome so far. The "face" isn't at all what I was expecting, but it looks impressive enough for me to not need to complain about it. I also really like how creepy the face looks. Quicksilver still looks bland, but also still better than his upcoming appearance in DoFP. Scarlet Witch looks slightly more plain than the concept art had us believe, but it's still acceptable (and I'm sure she'll look amazing when using her powers).

As these sets have already started to become readily available, how long do people predict it will be before we get some hi-res pictures of the movie sets (and hopefully some kind of trailer and poster for the movie too)?

It's hard to judge from those pictures whether that is Ultron or not, but if it is then it's looking unusual. It looks too bulky to me, but I do like the detailing. Let's hope we get better pictures from all angles in the near future so as to be able to formulate a better opinion of this interpretation of Ultron.

Well, she is only meant to be having one scene now, so if she died it wouldn't be all too surprising. It would be disappointing if they killed off such a pivotal member of the X-Men though, and that's coming from someone who hasn't seen any of the modern X-Men films so far (Days of Future Past will be my first experience of cinematic X-Men).

It's not technically MCU, but we finally have a new trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past. This looks like it's going to be brilliant, and I'm loving how awesome the Sentinels are looking. *EDIT* The video I had originally linked seems to have been blocked, so I've updated with a new link.

On the subject on sets for both Marvel and DC movies, I believe that we should at the very least get 1 set per film. Take next year for example. We're obviously going to get multiple sets from Age of Ultron, but it would be a shame if LEGO didn't give us at least one Ant-Man set as well. Besides, I can imagine that Marvel would want to try to market Ant-Man as much as possible to ensure that the movie isn't a failure. As with GotG, providing LEGO set(s) for Ant-Man would be the best way to do it. After all, when are we likely to get Ant-Man in a comic/cartoon set any time soon?

Hudson Taylor - Weapons

If that's the case, then an Arkham Knight Batmobile could be feasible for next year's winter wave. I'd definitely prefer an entirely new Batmobile design to a Tumbler rehash, particularly if we got a couple of new villains with the Arkham Knight Batmobile.

That set definitely looks excellent, particularly the new Shredder. The accuracy of the build is also very impressive, but the minifigures are only slight variants of what we've seen so far. The Robot Foot Soldier is an awful design, but there isn't exactly a better way for LEGO to manage characters with 4 arms. Overall, the build looks excellent, but the minfigures could do with more variety and something truly new to add appeal to the set, though the new Shredder does help that somewhat.

Seeing the clone brand products in this thread is a barrel of laughs. I honestly wonder if these companies spend any more than 2 minutes designing these before throwing them on shelves in the vain hope that some sucker buys one. It's the only likely explanation for such catastrophic models.

^ I'm not certain about the second vehicle, but I believe that the first is from Knight Rider.

Well if we do get a Marvel D2C, it will likely be based off of something in which multiple heroes and villains can be justifiably in the set, as was the case with Arkham Asylum. Based on that, something like the X-Mansion would work very well. My knowledge of X-Men is still rather basic, but I know there are many different heroes and villains involved in the franchise. They could have the likes of Iceman, Jean Grey, Beast and others for heroes and have Juggernaut, Sabretooth, Mystique and others for the villains. Hopefully if the Cuusoo project reaches 10,000 votes, though it would most likely be rejected, LEGO will realise that there is popular demand for X-Men making such a set viable. Of course, I would love something like a Tony Stark lab with numerous suits from Iron Man 3 or a set with Winter Soldier, but at the end of the day it depends on what TLG consider viable.

Right, so I'm now hearing dozens of different dates on which these are meant to be released. Do we actually know for sure that the official release date is 1st May, and are we even sure that this series will follow the trend of being released slightly early?

I'd be disappointed if we got an UCS Tumbler at this stage; for one, it would be entirely out of scale with any other model released in this line, and would just generally be pointless. Not only that, but if we got another D2C set from DC I would be pretty frustrated, seeing as Marvel has yet to see a D2C set yet. And quite frankly, a Marvel D2C would be able to add more new content to the line than an UCS Tumbler ever could.

I'd be shocked if we didn't see Casey Jones in a 2015 set; he has already been of great significance in the series, and will clearly continue to be important. Hopefully in 2015 we actually get some season 2 stuff in general, as this year's wave just seems to be all season 1 content again.