I will never get my head around what makes a successful figure release. The Gundam Converge line-up has seen a lot of different mobile suits over the years but I feel that the producers tend to go back to the evergreens with a very predictable frequency. We are swimming in variants of some mobile suits while others that seem like easy cash-grabs fail to ever materialize. Then, there is the P-Bandai thing of doing something completely unexpected out of left-field - taking a chance on something incredibly wild. I don't think that the Jupiter Empire Dictus-pair was on anybody's Converge radar and I would love to know how many votes they got in the Bandai Gundam Converge "which MS should we do next?" survey.
I know I have brought it up before but why does the artwork for these Steel 7 boxes have to be so busy? This probably looked much better in full colour and I'm not really getting a good idea about what I am going to find inside the box. Thankfully the flip-side does a good job of detailing the contents but this is not exactly grabbing your attention. The cover may as well just have been black like on the old premium Gashapon NEXT and DASH sets.
I really like how each mobile suit is presented with a little blurb on the back cover, credit to the Steel 7 releases for doing that. I would caution against reading it if you intend to engage with the Steel 7 storyline because there are a couple of major spoilers in there which perhaps they could have left out.
This box is part of a set of releases that commemorate the 30th Anniversary of Crossbone Gundam. In essence however, the releases are all Steel 7-story centric and that manga is itself also coming up on a 20th Anniversary since it was published in 2006. These are all Premium Bandai products not intended for retail but each set could be ordered separately. The first two boxes of Steel 7 units came out in February while the Jupiter Empire forces followed in March. The preorder price for this box was set at ¥5995 including tax. No, not six-thousand; special price for you only five-thousand nine-hundred and ninety-five.
Much like the other Steel 7-boxes they are crammed so full of bags that the sides are bulging in all directions. There is no way I would be able to squeeze them all back inside without tearing a side off. At first glance it seems pretty straightforward; there are four large bags for each figure and four accompanying smaller bags with additional components. Assembly should be a walk in the park! Well, or so I thought.
Actually, the components in the smaller bags are not earmarked to specific figure - some bags contain parts for two different figures and some parts are even used interchangeably. Even with the online build instructions at hand this was way more complicated than I wanted it to be and I think this could have been handled a bit better.
Since I initially couldn't figure out exactly which parts belonged to which figure before starting assembly I'll just post two examples of a figure in mobile suit form and in mobile armour form. Please note that some of the components are not exclusively used by one or the other. Here you see the right-hand Dictus in mobile suit mode with some of its options over on the left side.
And here we have the other Dictus but in mobile armour mode. The beam effect parts are option bits and some of them also go on the figure in mobile suit mode. The peg types differ from the arm components on the MS and MA mode figures but even then I had trouble understanding which side was front or back, or at which angle the arm was intended to attach to the body. I had expected this build to be much easier than the Steel 7 B-team but I ended up having a bit of a frustrating experience with these instead. Go figure.
Jurisdis Sinistra Dictus (Mobile Suit Mode)
I'm not going to go into the weird backstory of why these two mobile suits exist and why they are more or less mirror images of each other, I can't take much of Crossbone seriously anyway. Talking about the figure itself, the paint quality is good, so far most of the Steel 7 figures I have looked at have been on point. Due to this figure's strange comic book-style anatomy some of the components have unusual peg types and a couple of them are really weak and don't really attach all that well. case in point is that black gun pod on the outside of the left arm, it attaches with an H-shaped peg and because the whole arm will bend as you try to push it in the connection is a bit weak. The small feet also do not allow for big sturdy pegs so the base likes to come off if you try to lift it (par for the course for Converge #Sharp really).
Both mobile suits have option parts for both of their arms. You can remove the Heat Ha... I'm sorry the beam axe and instead replace it with a closed fist. Next you can remove the golden claw-like things sticking out from both wrists and replace them with ones that have green beam blades sticking out of them. On the images above I only did this for the white arm because the golden thing on the black arm actually has a swivel-joint near its base that allows the longer claw to swing open. When I tried to pull this component out of its socket to replace it with the beam effect part it resisted fiercely and I didn't want to risk damaging the swivelling-joint by pulling harder. I had the exact same problem on the Dextra Dictus by the way.
Libertas Dextra Dictus (Mobile Suit Mode)
The Right Hand of Freedom is truly a mirror image of the Left Hand of Justice (how ironic then that it is swinging its beam axe with the left hand). I don't know what they have in their food there in the Jupiter-sphere because the mobile suit designs that come out of its orbit are truly wild. But where Paptimus Scirocco was churning out one hit after another Callisto here isn't really doing anything for me. It is obvious that they do not have circus shows in the Empire because then he wouldn't have designed the bestest and most evilest mobile suit in the solar system with clown shoes.
Anyway; these designs are pretty wild and do not really fit in with the established business practices of how a mobile suit looks in the Universal Century-era but they are at least very unique.
Jurisdis Sinistra Dictus (Mobile Armour Mode)
When I purchased these figures I wasn't entirely sure if you actually got two or four figures in the box and if some nightmarish parts-conversion was going to be involved. Thankfully though, the mobile armour mode figures are indeed separate, but as I mentioned before not every component is exclusive to the respective figure. The most glaring issue here is that you only get one closed fist for each mobile suit, so you have to decide which figure will be using it. The same goes for those beam blades that shoot out from the wrists, there is enough to equip these on one of the two figures. This will restrict your freedom a bit, I think at least a second closed fist could have been included without affecting the cost of producing this set.
This is the first Converge figure that is intended to be posed upside-down and I think it works great. The stand is also sturdy and feels reliable and won't be coming off any time soon. Less sturdy however is the elongated neck of the suit that will fall off very easily when you touch it, this goes for both of the MA figures. I have chosen here to show off the Sinistra Dictus without any of its beam blades extended but it can be made to look in the same was as the Dextra Dictus below.
Libertas Dextra Dictus (Mobile Armour Mode)
And speaking of the Dextra, here it is with all its beam claws extended from the wrists and toes. You can always count on Crossbone Gundam to have the wildest and most deranged designs from pretty much any Gundam franchise. Even GQuuuuuuX or G seem normal when looking into the crazy gallery that makes up Steel 7.
Conclusion
I don't think I need to make any particular recommendations for this particular set, I have a feeling that you either love or hate them. There may be some fence-sitters out there who plan on getting all the other Steel 7-sets and now fret over what to do when they realize that the figures they have their eyes on are only sold as a complete set. I haven't seen that many Steel 7-figures on the secondary market yet, and most of them have indeed been sold as a complete set so I don't know how good the odds are of cherry-picking individual releases, maybe after some time passes the individual boxes will become more frequent.
From a technical point of view however, there is nothing in here that would make me recommend against a purchase. Sure, some components are a bit fiddly to work with but it is nothing major really and I look forward to seeing all four sets next to each other.
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