TOY REVIEW: Play Arts Kai Lightning from Lightning Returns FFXIII is electrifying

Final Fantasy characters are the A-list celebrities of the video game world. Who hasn’t heard of Final Fantasy VII’s tragic flower girl, Aerith, or Final Fantasy X’s priestess-turned-songstress, Yuna?

 

While XIII’s heroine, Lightning, may never reach the heights of popularity of fellow alumni Aerith and Yuna, she remains one of the franchise’s most important, being one of the few female video game leads who is less about sex and more about kicking ass. Not that Lightning isn’t attractive; in fact, she is one of the most gorgeous virtual characters ever to grace our screens.

 

It’s therefore no mystery that Square Enix saw it fit to give Lightning another whirl in a brand new game. And with that game, comes a new toy. But is Play Arts Kai’s Lightning from Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII any good? Does this amalgam of plastic and paint hold up to Square Enix’s vision of a character beloved by millions?

 

 

 

A close-to-perfect translation

 

Out of the package, the first thing you’ll notice is that Lightning stinks to high heaven. The strong, fresh paint stench eventually does dissipate, but for the first three to four days, your olfactory receptors will be constantly bombarded by her malignant body odor. If you’re a regular Play Arts Kai consumer, you’re probably already used to this. Whatever the case, taking her out of her box is worth the price of a sore nose.

 

Simply put, Lightning is stunning. The face is beautiful, complete with the squinty eyes, long, thin nose, pouty lips, Spock-like eyebrows and pointed chin that everyone and their mother fell in love with. Perhaps the head just needed to be a tad narrower; otherwise, it’s an almost exact replica of the in-game 3D model’s breathtaking visage.

 

The hair is outstanding, featuring multiple layers of tresses swept stylishly to one side, with one extra long lock undulating down the left side of her face to her chest. The paint application on the hair employs several gradients of pink, from dark to an almost translucent light. When viewed from the back, her head kind of reminds me of a particularly succulent fruit. I’ve been tempted multiple times to bite into it just to see if it’s as sweet as it looks.

 

The rest of her is just as magnificent, an incredibly close action figure rendition of Lightning in her Equilibrium garb, her default costume in the game.

 

 

 

There is a lot of intricate detailing on her shoulder and arm armor. Painted using a mixture of glossy and darker silver, it looks like real metal, and with cleverly-applied “scratches”, the armor looks like it has seen its fair share of battles. The front piece of her body armor may have less detail, but the material has a coarseness to it that does a fine job of convincing your eyes that it isn’t made of plastic.

 

The knee-high boots are badass, like something you’d want to kick or knee your enemies in the teeth with. There’s something about the combination of black and blood-red that just makes her look so dangerous. Cool shading on the kneepads and thigh armor also ensure the colors are neither flat nor dull.

 

The “cloth” parts of her armor – her cape and those weird things that kind of look like pants but really aren’t – have been sculpted to look like they’re in motion. I’m not a fan of pre-posed parts on an action figure, but I got over this quickly. The windblown effect achieves a kind of drama; I can picture Lightning standing on the edge of a precipice, the wind battering her body as she looks down at the enemy lair far below.

 

 

 

Though Lightning is showing quite more skin this time around, she’s still pretty covered-up. The exposed parts of her body are where you will notice the differences between the sculpt and the 3D model. Play Arts Kai is known for taking liberties with their sculpts, giving some of the male characters more muscle mass, making females bustier and generally curvier. Lightning, for one, now has more pronounced curves around the waistline, with sharply-protruding pelvic bones that are virtually nonexistent on her 3D model.

 

Play Arts Kai also gave her thighs a little more thickness, a bit more muscle. In addition, there is a bit of shadowing on her thighs and abdomen, giving a hint of the warrior-hard musculature under the skin.

 

Personally I don’t get why Lightning is so damn skinny in the games; Vanille I can understand, but Lightning is supposed to be a former sergeant in the Guardian Corps – a warrior. Unless her training regimen involves starvation, there is no reason Lightning should have the body of a sickly fourteen-year-old boy, with so little meat on her bones. In the same way it doesn’t make a lick of sense for stick-thin Gal Gadot to play a battle-hardened Amazon princess, it’s not a matter of aesthetics but realism. So I do prefer the changes, as minor as they are.

 

Lightning stands over a mind-blowing 9 inches tall. That’s a heck of a lot of plastic. She is of the same scale as Play Arts Kai Yuffie and Wonder Woman, and will most likely tower over your collection.

 

Bendy, but somewhat stiff around the joints

 

Don’t expect Lightning to pull off any extreme, contortionist poses like a Figma or Revoltech figure could. Lightning’s articulation is good, but not great.

 

Her collar and single long bundle of hair are made of soft material, so she can look down and shake her head, no problem. The back of her hair is inflexible though, so she can’t look up.

 

You get the standard range of motion for the arms. The shoulder joints are frustratingly tight however; moving the entire arm up and down requires Herculean effort and the patience of a saint. From experience with other Play Arts Kai figures with similarly stubborn shoulder joints, those tiny pegs attaching her shoulders to her sides have a tendency to break, so exercise extreme caution with them.

 

 

 

I enjoy the leg articulation; it allows her to do splits, Van Damme-style. She can’t rotate those legs however, but you can rotate her feet. She inherits the funky-looking double-jointed knees of her Play Arts Kai family, so as much as possible I avoid having her sit on her haunches, because it looks just too darn awkward.

 

 

Her upper torso can fully rotate and tilt sideways, but she has trouble bending backwards or forwards.

 

I found myself wishing her cape was poseable, too, but alas, it was not to be. The good thing is all the “cloth” parts of her garb are soft, so they don’t get in the way of articulation.

 

 

 

Sword and shield

 

Lightning doesn’t come with many accessories, just her sword, Crimson Blitz; her shield, Twilight Lotus; some hands, and a stand. The sword is magnificent in its simplicity, and rigid. It and can be held in her hand or clipped onto her back. The shield is doubly impressive, designed like a starship with some elaborate, decorative wings. This you can attach to her left arm, or better yet, her back, to awesome effect. Seriously, with that thing behind her head and shoulders, she looks like some kind of badass, level 99 MMORPG sorceress supreme.

 

The connecting joints that attach the accessories to parts of Lightning’s body are sturdy enough to support motion without breakage, but are thin and have been known to snap with too much force. So again, be extremely careful when handling them.

 

 

 

 

Lightning strikes!

 

Lightning from Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is, hands down, one of the most amazing Play Arts Kai figures to date. The sculpt and paintjob are exquisite, as close as you can get to a mirror image of the in-game model. If you can get past the limited poseability, the ridiculously tough shoulder joints and some iffy connecting pegs, Lightning is superb. She may not be the most memorable Final Fantasy heroine, but as an action figure she is absolutely electrifying. So this time, let Lightning strike – it’s worth it.

 

— TJD, GMA News