We have arrived at Day Seven of Mobile Armor Week and it is time to take a look at a blast from the Converge past. The Deep Striker is one of the very first Converge EX figures and was first released as EX 03 in June 2014. It then got the CORE treatment in May 2017 and this is the figure we will examine today.
It was actually pretty hard to come by this figure after its release; it took me half a year
and several near misses with sold out items before I managed to snag mine in late 2017. The figure originally sold for ¥2800 and I paid ¥3500 for mine six months later. Lately on Mandarake I've seen it go for ¥5000-¥6000 so it seems to remain pretty rare even today.
Parts-wise we have the same set-up as for the original EX03 Deep Striker figure. Basically the figure retains its old colour scheme but it now features metallic paint job here and there. I think action base may also has a received a slightly different colour tone about it.
The Deep Strike figure also has a basic mobile suit mode where you put legs on the weirdly drawn out torso and give it a proper right arm. This figure looks pretty hardcore I must say. Notice the two-tone red colour scheme on the shoulders; we have seen the same pattern used on the CORE S-Gundam although that one was in blue of course.
The action base also doubles as storage for the unused mobile armor parts. You can extend the base and the place the various equipment and gear choices in specific places on the base. Honestly it feels rather gimmicky and it can be a bit fiddly to get all the pieces in place and avoid accidentally bumping the base which will send half the components flying. I just ended up putting unused components in a ziplock bag inside the box...
Looking at the EX 03 and CORE 011 figures you can see that the changes are kind of minimal. Sure, the metallic paint job is great but it isn't all that superior in my opinion. Notice also how the printed logos and text on the left shoulder isn't even readable on the new figure here.
I am not really a huge fan of the Deep Striker design and the Converge version looks even weirder than the real thing. That is why I ended up keeping the original EX 03 figure in mobile suit mode, but since I now have two of them the CORE figure gets to play Mobile Armor. As you can see it looks pretty impressive on its base but I still can't shake the feeling of weirdness. I have the same problem with the Converge Dendrobium whereas designs like the Neue Ziel or Neo Zeong look almost normal to me. :)
Got to love the blue metallic detail on that dish. The paintwork on this figure is really, really great and helps me to look past its weird shape.
Overall if you are a Gundam Sentinel fan you have probably already managed to find a copy of this figure for your own collection. If you are only moderately interested in this design I think there are more interesting Converge figures to grab before it, such as the transforming EX 04 Hummingbird or the floating EX 18 Ex-S Gundam.
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