Lysander Chau has taken my breath away with this digital rendition of a Macross VF1J Max. I confess to not knowing a ton about the source material this robot hails from, but that doesn’t stop it from being an icon of my childhood. A confusing web of 1980s imports and copyright law put this robot (and others like him) everywhere back in the day – from the The Transformers toy line to knock-offs in Radio Shack and everywhere in-between.

Here’s what I do know: This piloted mech can transform from cool looking space-age robot into a modern-style fighter jet, and it can even form a sort of weird minotaur-like GERWALK mode. And Lysander has captured all that functionality and included all the various armor and jump jet add-ons that give the jet mode its distinctive look. And, really, when it looks this cool, does anything else matter?