An admirable attempt to make an affordable third party iteration of one of the most popular mobile suit designs in its most premium form.
Cosmetically congruent with the Bandai Tamashii Nations counterpart (review of this can be found here), the Sapphire Strike Freedom sports a pearl white colour scheme, complemented by a delicious shade of metallic purple and accented with metallic turquoise. Grey is also used to break up some of that pearl white, as with some areas of black. The die-cast gold inner frame however, is brilliant, easily outshining any of the parts painted with metallic colours. The resulting aesthetic resembles jewellery, hence the Sapphire moniker.
Being a third party release, don't expect Japanese-level quality control: nubs appear on random places and some parts tend to fall off, but these issues are thankfully kept to a minimum.
The Sapphire Strike Freedom comes with everything in the original version, no surprises there. A bunch of metallic red parts are also thrown in with the set, just in case you want to swap out the turquoise parts.
The whole set is not as solid and stable as the authentic version, although some joints like the knees are way too stiff. The beam shield generators pop off way too easily, and the forearm swivel is a tad loose. The bundled hand parts do a decent job holding the Sapphire's weapons, but the beam rifle has a tendency to slip out of the right trigger hand. The backpack however, is extremely solid, able to hold up any pose you can think of for the wings.
Even without using the bundled display base, the Sapphire Strike Freedom is able to hold intricate poses thanks to its weight and die-cast parts. Care will have to be taken when bending the legs as the joints there are way too tight, emitting creaking noises when in motion. The railguns on the side skirts can also get in the way of posing, although they can be easily moved aside.
his version of the Strike Freedom is also less detailed than the Bandai version, having much lesser decal application on areas such as the front skirt armour, legs and arms. However, for the price point (less than a third of the original), this is a pretty decent addition to any Metal Build collection for collectors on a budget.
If anything, it will definitely look sweet standing beside the standard Metal Build Strike Freedom.
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Can dragoons come off so you can add some wings of light on?
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