Review: #98
Name: Squall Leonhart
Brand: Play Arts Kai
Line: Dissidia Final Fantasy
Year of Release: 2011
Volume: N/A
PACKAGING AND CONTENTS:
Squall comes in a elegant box with a purplish hue and a black lower portion where the logos are. Fairly bland in terms of personal features, there's no subtle hinting of Squall in the general packaging.
Obviously, the back contains the stock photos of the figure in awesome (and hard to recreate) poses, as well as cross selling the two other figures in the line.
Although the box's proportions are perfect, a lot of the width is wasted, being empty space, they could compact the packaging a lot more actually...
And here's a closer shot of the photos at the back. These boxes are worthwhile to keep, they feel very premium.
Squall comes with his gunblade and two hands (a left and right) to hold the weapons. He comes with fists originally attached (which I've swapped out already).
FIGURE:
Let's begin. This figure of Squall is based on his redesign in Dissidia Final Fantasy, however, and I am kinda glad for this, it's not too far off from his originally appearance in Final Fantasy VIII. Only major differences are the fur trims on either side of his hips, and the black cloth on his right hip.
Well, there are some colour differences as well I guess. Anyway, black is the predominant color and it suits the solitary nature of Squall. You can actually take the bomber jacket off, although I see no reason to (the jacket's made from soft plastic).
You might have already noticed from the above pictures that Squall's posture is just like what he does in the games. However, there's a trade off... and that is his legs are angled too sharply and sits too far back so that it looks unnatural in a lot of angles. You can try and straighten it but then he won't be able to stand unsupported properly.
Still, the shape of his legs gives Squall a lot of personality, especially when you're trying to recreate some of his trademark postures from Final Fantasy VIII, such as resting his hand on his hip (I had already swapped the fists out at this point and no way in hell was I going to swap it again just for this pose).
Or you can have him face palm himself.
There was one thing that I always criticized in the earlier Play Arts figures (well, just the Final Fantasy XIII ones) was the head sculpt being ugly and only bearing a passing resemblance to the character. Well, with Squall, the detailing and expression is spot on. There's an unbelievable amount of detail in his eyes, and he does have his scar. You feel as if Squall is annoyed with the whole world.
It doesn't really stop there, his jacket and Griever pendant is present. I just realised, looking at the photo above, that there are paint scuffing and smearing. It's not as bad in real life, it just looks really bad here since the camera zoomed in so much.
Squall's gunblade take on the Revolver model, his default weapon in the games and cutscenes. Probably the model that looks the most 'natural', although the Lionheart model looks pretty wicked as well. The gunblade is an interesting looking weapon, thought it was lame at first (until I played FFVIII that is, where my opinion changed and I love it now).
All the details are present. It even has a Griever pendant attached via a chain (a real chain, not a fake one, so that it swings above whenever you move the weapon).
Can't really tell if the etching on the blade is the Griever (it's supposed to be). The blade itself can detach, it feels like as if you can get replacement blades for it (or other model types). What's more, the chamber of the gunblade rotates, that was a really surprising element.
In order to hold the gunblade, you will need to switch out the fists with hands especially sculpted for the task. Squall only holds the gunblade through friction, and this is very annoying. It means that the gunblade is never held on too securely, and more often than not, while you're trying to pose him, his grip will come loose and the blade flop around.
Talking about swapping hands, I hate the task. On my figure (and at least one other I've seen on the internet), pulling out his hands might also pull the wrist joint with it, which is a pain as it's a fragile joint and you can't wiggle it out.
Squall can hold is with two hands. As you'd expect, the range of motion becomes severely limited.
However, the designer has thought of this, and gave Squall some shoulder flex. His shoulders fold forward, which makes double hand posing a whole lot easier. His arms are also well jointed.
The only thing that lets you down is his wrist articulation, which only swivels. It would have been awesome and way more useful if he got given balljointed wrists, or even just some up-down motion.
I tried to recreate his victory pose of resting his gunblade on top of his shoulder and I can't do it!!! The elbows are bent as far as they could, and the gunblade as low as possible, but I just can't get it to rest like the packaging or other images I've seen on the internet. It's very annoying... on mine at least, it seems as if it's the problem of the wrist, maybe it does have an up down joint?
Anyway, the articulation is there for you to do (mostly) whatever you like. I found that the legs are missing a swivel, but it's no biggies. Although they have got to redesign those ugly double jointed knees, they look terrible when you use them.
A bit problem with posing Squall is that he may not be easy to stand. Due to the angle of his legs, and the joints of his feet, it doesn't allow a wide range of poses where Squall will be able to stand flat on his own two feet. Squall stands at approximately 21cm tall.
At first, the gunblade felt proportionally bigger for him but the more I look at it, the more I think it's perfect. Also, this Squall is supposed to wield his gunblade single handed, and single handed poses do look better (since they can be more dynamic).
I was worried the waist might have been really thin but it's not the case, and he's got a hidden waist joint and torso joint. Mine had a slight assembly error though, but it was easy enough to fix (popped out both his legs, and twisted the piece with the hip joints 180 degrees).
OVERALL:
This is an excellent figure, it's looks really good (even if the legs are a bit weird) and evokes the character of Squall very well, whether it's the one from Dissidia or FFVIII. That said, Squall is my favourite Final Fantasy character so I had to had one of his toy representations... Anyway, there might not be so much intricate detailing here (given that his design is relatively simple) but there's no reason not to get this figure.
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