heat rods of tallgeese and epyon

[Den]

just wondering if the epyon's heat rod is retractable? and as for the retractable on tallgeese 3, how does it fold up inside the tiny shield

[Wingnut]

From what I can tell, Epyon's is not retractable as we can see it hanging around even when the suit is doing those dynamic poses with a overpowered beam saber like He-Man calling for the power of Grayskull.
And that shield is rather well sized to hold a coil of stuff assuming that the two rods are of the same length. More wonky/BSery is the length of Altron EW's claw arms and their Stretch Armstrong like quality to extend well beyond the carrying length.

[AmuroNT1]

Epyon's heat rod can presumably retract, since its design is identical to Tallgeese III's (really; look closely at TG3's shield and you can see that the bottom half is Epyon's). As for the mechanics of it...it's never been said, and there's not really any lineart of the inside of the shields. The models don't show it, but perhaps there's some form of storage in there.

(On an unrelated note, my theory for Altron EW's dragon fangs has always been that the red segments are collapsible and fit inside one another when not in use.)

[MythSearcher]

Epyon's heat rod can presumably retract, since its design is identical to Tallgeese III's (really; look closely at TG3's shield and you can see that the bottom half is Epyon's). As for the mechanics of it...it's never been said, and there's not really any lineart of the inside of the shields. The models don't show it, but perhaps there's some form of storage in there.

(On an unrelated note, my theory for Altron EW's dragon fangs has always been that the red segments are collapsible and fit inside one another when not in use.)

From the line art of Epyon's shield(link.)
it was drawn to be retracted, just not as short as Tallgeese III's depiction.

I will never believe that small shield of Epyon can stuff that much heat rod in it.(even if it is just as long as the TIII's)
The TIII's heat rod? maybe. At the very least, the shield seems to be bigger and more reasonably sized. But it is fits, the shield will have little useful armour thickness.

[Amion]

I always believed the same about the Altron. It's the only reasonable explanation to me.

Yeah..I'd believe it about the Tallgeese III's shield, it looks big enough and could feasible hold a heat rod if the rod itself collapses inward a little, which it appears to in the Epyon lineart.

As for Epyon...well...we never actually see it retracted in anime, do we?

[Gelgoog Jager]

If the MS-07B Gouf is supposed to store its tentacle-like heat rod in the small protrusion on its arm (without affecting the functions of the arm itself), I have a much easier time believing that the thin heat rods of the Talgeese III and Epyon can retract into shields.

[Den]

those altron fangs really boggles the mind as to where the extra boxes go after retracting. anyway i never knew that the epyon's heat rods retract a bit.

[Arsarcana]

Well, for the TV suit some of them fit inside the hollow shoulder armor which is enough to give the weapon some surprsie extra reach but nothing like the feats we see animated where they can extend several times the length of the suit itself and support the weight of an MS. For EW!Altron, substitue 'inside the arm attachment' with the same caveat that there's no way it could hold the length we see in action shots.

Or if you want a shorter response: Animation magic.

[Amion]

"Altron's arms can't extend this far!"

Maybe that's what all those poor Oz soldiers thought about the time a dragon fang launched into them...

[MythSearcher]

Well, for the TV suit some of them fit inside the hollow shoulder armor which is enough to give the weapon some surprsie extra reach but nothing like the feats we see animated where they can extend several times the length of the suit itself and support the weight of an MS. For EW!Altron, substitue 'inside the arm attachment' with the same caveat that there's no way it could hold the length we see in action shots.

Or if you want a shorter response: Animation magic.

The original line art for the TV version looks reasonable enough. Possibly the model captured the near best case of such design.
It used the arm as part of the length,(meaning that arm can actually extend as long as the Dragon fang)

The Katoki version looks cooler, but also rendered the part look much weaker.(and the hand function should have been compromised by a lot)
The HG 1/100 version is true to the design, which only gives it 5 blocks and thus cannot extend too much. the HG1/144 version only have a 5-block unit(no inter joints) when not extended, but provided 3 more extra 5-block units that you need to attached on yourself for different poses, and have no idea where to hide them inside the MS.

I've seen modelers buy multiple HG1/100 EW version and attached 15 blocks on one side and can still have it retracted(but it looks quite obvious that you have a big batch of red stuff there instead of the slim look of the original) but you can possibly fit 10 blocks on one side and it still doesn't look too odd. But none of these designs can make it extend anything further than maybe thrice of the MS original arm reach.

[Mimeblade]

It still bothers me to no end that the Japanese model kits call it "Dragon Hang" instead of "Dragon Fang" (same with Beam Scissors/Beam Scythe)

Gundam Breaker 2 gives us a really good look at Epyon's Shield, though the Heat Rod can be created as as separate weapon (not sure if it's really detachable or not).

As for how stuff collapses in to itself, I always thought the Fang has some kind of "crinkle-system" kinda like how bendable straws work.

[AmuroNT1]

Fang/Hang is a simple case of mis-romanization, since F and H are pronounced the same in Japanese (like the infamous L/R situation).

Admittedly, "beam scissors" always bugged me...I think they were struggling to come up with a name that would suggest something stronger than a scythe, and the best thing they could come up with was an object with TWO blades. Japan, you so wacky.

And Breaker 2 mainly has the heat rod as a separate weapon for one simple reason: they made a whole category for Whip-type weapons, and then needed things to populate it. It's the same reason the Gouf and Gouf Custom's heat rods as well as the Kämpfer's chain mine are also counted as Whips. Otherwise, the only weapon in the category would be the Nobel Gundam's beam ribbon. There's never been any indication that the Wing-style heat rods can be used as handheld weapons.

[MythSearcher]

Fang/Hang is a simple case of mis-romanization, since F and H are pronounced the same in Japanese (like the infamous L/R situation).

The H row consists of ハ(Ha) ヒ(Hi) フ(Fu) ヘ(He) ホ(Ho),
Fu will be used for Hu, but if you needed F pronunciations,
they are usually rendered like this:
ファ(Fa) フィ(Fi) フ(Fu) フェ(Fe) フォ(Fo)

Thus Dragon Fang is usually rendered as ドラゴンファング(Doragon fangu) instead of ドラゴンハング(Doragon hangu) in the box art indicates.
The 00 GN Fangs do use ファング.

It seems like they used this rendition in all W Gundam dragon fangs and Altron was not supposed to be Latin-like, but instead is supposed to be a corrupted Chinese 二頭龍(Twin headed dragon/two dragons, head being the counting unit used for dragons in Chinese makes it a bit ambiguous) so corrupted katakanas might be intentional.

[AmuroNT1]

Too true; I forgot that.

[Amion]

The crinkle system sounds like the only way for the EW blocks to retract as they do. It still bugs me, though, because if these blocks are crinkling, where does all the circuity and joint structure go? Maybe the joints are like molecules and kinda crumple up also?