Tomopop Review: Final Fantasy XIII Play Arts Kai Odin

4:00 PM on 09.23.2010   |   Colette Bennett

Last's year Comic-Con was the first time we got to lay our eyes on the Odin from Square Enix's Play Arts Kai line. Unpainted when originally shown, it still had all the beauty and elegance that you can expect from large-scale Square Enix products. The fully transformable figure comes to retail this month, and thanks to Square, we got a chance to get a good look at this piece up close and personal.

I was joined on this photoshoot by New Orleans photographer George Rey, who was kind enough to help me with the process of transforming Odin from his horse form to his God form. It was a great deal harder than it looked, as you will notice in the photos below.

Hit the jump for more! 

Figure Name: Play Arts Kai Odin
Figure Maker: Square Enix
Retail: US$199.99

The mighty Odin arrived in a tremendous box, which is only fitting to his stature, I suppose. Since I knew this figure was fully transformable and rather large to boot, I thought it might be helpful to have a friend on hand, so I asked George to come along on the shoot. Thank the gods I did, because the assembly of this piece was somewhat more complex than either of us could have imagined.

Out of the box, Odin's pieces are stacked into two trays. The top one, as you can see here, holds the horse body and some extra joints and hands, which will come in handy later down the line.

The second tray holds the weapon for the God form, the stand, and the white cape attachment. Lots of pieces! Also, one really cool added bonus was a pair of extra hands for Lightning, Final Fantasy XIII's protagonist. In fact, Lightning is meant to ride Odin and can also use his weapon, and that would have been a really great idea for these photos had we not given away the figures shortly after our review of them back in March. Oh well.

The horse form looks like this right out of the box. It has foldable ears, which we have down in these photos as we actually preferred the weird alien look it gave to the head. All the loving attention to detail you notice in Final Fantasy character design is present here as well, as you can see.

Here's the back view. Taking a look at the hind quarters, you can get an idea of how the body is going to transform (you can spot the God form's feet here).

And one more look, before we totally take this guy in another direction.

Noble, right? Well, you ain't seen nothing yet. Of course, the box had a set of instructions on how to transform Odin into God form. It was perfectly concise; however, we honestly puzzled over some of the pieces, especially when it came to taking the horse head and next and changing it into some sort of elaborate arm shield thing.

This was after about twenty minutes of trying to make it work. It took us an additional twenty and a lot of putting our heads together before any of it made sense. I would not recommend this for children as the assembly can be complex and I can see younger kids getting frustrated with it (or maybe doing it ten times more efficiently than my friend and I did here -- who knows!)

Finally, after all that work, here he is. This figure cannot be displayed without a stand, as he is very heavy due to the arm shield and headpiece. Of course, he's mega cool looking, so hopefully that makes up for the difficulty in posing him.

In order to get to this stage, you will have to replace the hands, add on the golden headpieces, change the joints in the arms, add the plume that goes on the back of the head and the white cape, and try not to kill yourself or drop the toy in the process. It's a challenge, I admit. 

In the end, the profile is really nice though. He really does look mighty.

There were two things about the Play Arts Kai Odin I disliked. One was the difficulty in transforming, although considering the complexity of the piece, I see why. However, the second thing is a possible dealbreaker: before transforming, the horse stood on its own, but after going from horse to God and then back, I noticed a major difference in the stability of the joints. The head of the horse was much harder to keep upright, and the legs felt shaky. I expect some movement after transforming a toy such as thing, but I was disappointed with how shaky the piece felt in the end.

If you don't plan to transform Odin frequently, that may be your best bet. Detail is great here, as we said before, and obviously this is a very visually striking collectible. But be aware of its weaknesses before you sink the money into one, since it is rather pricey.

You can pre-order Odin now through Big Bad Toy Store for US$189.99, or find him in stock at Hobby Link Japan.

[Special thanks to Square Enix for the review sample]