Toy Review/Pictorial: Bandai Tamashii Soul of Chogokin GX-46 Dygenguar and Aussenseiter

With Alteisen and Weissritter covered, we’re back to Super Robot Wars: OG with Dygenguar and Aussenseiter. Super Robot Wars is known for it’s sheer variety in terms of mecha design, and this pair is the epitome of it!

Video Segments:

Out of The Box: Beginning

Overview: 3:45

Dygenguar: 10:06

Aussenseiter:18:05

Transformation and Part Swap: 29:35

Stallion Mode: 51:18

Final THoughts: 1 hr., 2min.

This Shogun-type mecha is represented tremendously in this toy. An awesome amount of diecast give him a lot of heft in-hand, and it’s 7″ height gives it a very imposing presence on a shelf. The details are handed in this mold imaculately, and both of his optional faces (Stoic, and raged) are very finely detailed. The paint is top-notch too!

This figure has a nice amount of posablity to him, with some impressive ratchets in the elbow, even. An area where I was disappointed though, was his thighs: They swing outward, but not forward and backward. In part, it’s because of the way that the thihts have to shift forward to sit on Aussenseiter when it’s transformed, but it’s not something that absolutely stops that swivel from being implemented. As a non-transforming mecha, it’s not something I can really excuse.

He definitely comes with his variety of blades from the anime/game series, and each of them is equally as impressive to see him hold. He also comes with a variety of interchangeable hands to add different feels to poses.

Dygenguar by himself would be an amazing purchase, but throwing in a transforming Aussenseiter takes it to a whole new level of WOW. It comes in robot form to begin with, and the likeness to the anime model is astounding. The paint applications are also amazing, as well as the sheer amount of diecasting. I love the “smoked-but-clear” plastic that they used for his helmet accenting and horse mane/tail. It’s really smokin’ (pun intended!) in person.

He has nice articulation in his upper body, but the lack of waste swivel is where the basically nonexistent lower body articulation begins. It’s unfortunate, but at the same time, knowing that his legs become the front legs of the stallion and seeing just how they trainsform really shows you why the articulation isn’t there.

He comes with his two standard blasters. I absolutely love that he comes with clips to peg under his shoulder armor and help him hold them up so that there’s absolutely NO stress on his arms and elbow joints. This is genius engineering by the Soul of Chogokin team, and they deserve great credit for it. Also, the character-accurate storage for the weapons on his back is just awesome.

I go over it step-by-step in the video portion of this review, and I’ll state here that the transformation into stallion is NOT pretty, but very simple. I was having a problem with the stallion’s back hips pegging into place, but that’s since seemed to resolve itself, making me wonder if it was just either the pegs or peg holes needing to warp into a correct fit. I also recommend just using the more aesthetically-accurate swap pieces from the get-go, because this is one of those that just looks atrocious with the regular parts after transformation.

As a big fan of Super Robot Wars, and an even bigger fan of these two characters, I openly admit that I’m writing this review with a bias. However, I do feel that I’ve covered these thoroughly and objectively enough to show that they are good, detailed, and FUN toys that bring a great presence to any shelf that they’re on. They’re literally some leg articulation away from being total perfection, and even without they’re at a level that I’d consider masterpiece.

Overall Score: 9.0/10