Final Fantasy Trading Arts Kai Mini No. 06 - Lightning

The night after I got the Squall figure, I looked up what other characters got the chibi treatment. While the other figures are cute and all, none of them really seemed to click for me except for this one figure. You'd think that figure would be Cloud since my first Final Fantasy game was Final Fantasy VII. But it wasn't Cloud that stood out for me. It was another Gunblade wielder. The pink haired rule 63 female counterpart of Cloud Strife, Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII .

As with the other figures, the box is pretty standard fare. The same box design with a picture of the character on both sides of the box and a clear window up front where you can see the figure as well as all the accessories that it comes with.

The back shows you the figure in some poses along with the included speech bubbles and sign. You also get a shot of 2 other figures that were released along with Lightning.

Opening the box gives you the figure and it's accessories in a nice clam shell packaging, an instruction sheet and the display base, stand arms, sign clips and the speech bubbles on a plastic sprue. It's too bad that the sprue is on stuck to the red backing via a blister pack. Meaning that you have to rip the red backing to reach the sprue.

Here's Lightning with all her accesories. She comes with her standard clothes from Final Fantasy XIII, an extra right hand holding her Gunblade, an extra paid of hands holding Odin's swords, Odin's horse, 3 extra faces, 2 speech bubbles, the ATB command menu in FF13, a base and various stand arms and clips.

The 1st face, which is on the figure by default has the classic angry Lightning eyes and scowl. The eyes have a bit of a squint on them which is very cool.

The 2nd face shows more cutesy anime eyes with a bit of a smile. Both of Lightning's arms can swivel forward and back. You can also twist the hands for a little variety since they peg into her arms.

The 3rd face is what sold me on this figure. It has these sort of "whatever", "don't care" or sarcasm eyes which I think suits Lightning's character perfectly.

The 4th face is still the blank eyeless face that comes with all the figures where you can draw your own design pretend that she's brooding over something anime style.

To have her riding on Odin's horse, detach her legs which connect via a peg up to her torso. The horse already has a pair of legs attached with a similar peg to connect Lightning's upper half. Essentially you replace her legs, with a pair of legs on a horse. You might this this is cheap because you'd expect them to just have a separate body with the horse and just do a head swap. I say that leg swapping is better alternative because you keep the arm articulation on both legs and the leg swap gives you an added wait twist.

I still can't read Japanese so I have no clue what the speech bubbles say but it's cool that each figure comes with two. The command menu has a more solid print on it compared to Squall's.

The Lightning figure is from the 2nd wave of the Trading Arts Kai Mini line and doesn't have the issues I had with the Squall figure. Lightning clips on her base easier and nothing was paint stuck. Now the problems I had with Squall may all just be a QA thing and I just got the short end of the stick. Luck of the draw I guess.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the bases can tab into each other.