[Toy Review] ARANEA HIGHWIND - Final Fantasy XV Play Arts Kai

Nice of her to drop by. Here's the Play Arts Kai action figure of Final Fantasy XV's female mercenary Dragoon, Aranea Highwind. I don't know much about her because I haven't played the game that long but she is my favorite female character when it comes to her design, looks and very adult-like and playful vibe.

"Sorry, this girl doesn't work after hours.

I could, but there wouldn't be a single gil in it for me."

~ Aranea Highwind ~

PACKAGING

Front and back of the box.

The coffin-type packaging's design remains consistent with the FFXV PAK figures. You see the usuals here like the large product shot of Aranea, the game, the PAK logo and the holo-sticker at the front cover. The back shows more product shots showing some of her poses.

Front cover opened.

Opening the front cover reveals the figure with its accessories through the box's viewing window. You can read some info about Aranea at the left hand side. By the way, Aranea got the largest FFXV PAK box so far.

She's ready to hunt down her targets.

Packaging includes: Aranea figure, Helmet part (front), Helmet part (back), Stoss Spear (2 parts), L/R gripping hands, L/R open hands, Display stand

THE FIGURE

This Aranea PAK figure have some weight. The figure is really presentable and might take up a large space in your display shelf.

Viewing Aranea Highwind on four sides.

Aranea's design looks similar to Lightning's in Lightning Returns FFXIII. The thing is: Lightning's Equilibrium garb design is probably inspired by Aranea's character design made by Roberto Ferrari.

She's pretty.

This is why I like Aranea as a female character in FFXV, her face is beautiful and she's also tough. I like the face sculpt, it's really accurate to this figure's in-game counterpart.

I don't know why, but those tiny ponytails looks cute.

She got a lot of tied hair at the back of her head. But those ties doesn't have a good paint job. This part is removable for her head accessory.

Aranea's breast plate.

Aranea's had minor redesigning during FFXV's development. Now she's showing less skin on her legs and it looks better in my opinion. Her body armor resembles a classic Dragoon armor but more suited for mobility. Its design looks busy but it's good. There are straps around Aranea's exposed waist.

Tiny capes with tendrils or "dragon nails/talons"

The back features short capes which look like small dragon wings because of its pointy parts. These capes are made of soft flexible plastic.

Both arms looks really nice.

The arms, like the body armor looks busy as well with dragon-like scales. The hands have the same design too and they're pointy.

Some parts off Aranea's armor are really spiky.

The shoulder pads have a single protrusion. It's made of hard plastic and they look fragile.

Nice mantle with emblems

The white cape around her waist which I like to call "skirt-mantles" looks great with nicely printed light-colored emblems and a single small red emblem with yellow outlines at the bottom. The skirt-mantle's white part got a pearlescent paint

More capes!

In addition to the short capes, Aranea have two more, but longer, capes at her back. They're just black.

The leg armor looks cool.

The legs looks really good. The leg armor looks simple and got some dark blue hues and dark red lining. The pants underneath are grey and features some sculpted wrinkles. I don't like how the thigh swivel ruined the sculpt of both legs.

Nice boots

The dark red boots looks cool because of their design.

The boots have awesome spurs

They got the same protrusions found in the shoulder pads and acts as the heels for each boot.

ACCESSORIES

Aranea have a lot of stuff in her packaging but they come in separate pieces that you need to attach to form the actual accessory - helmet and spear. For hands, she got the standard pair of gripping hands and pair of open hands.

Aranea's stuff

That's her standard accessories. I don't think she needs more accessories.

Stoss Spear - unassembled

Aranea's Stoss Spear is split into three parts. The smaller end is already connected to the middle part in the packaging.

Stoss Spear complete

It looks more like a lance because of the larger and longer spike. Its pretty awesome, I like its very detailed design. The colors looks nice. The thing that bums me out is that the tip of the spear is bent.  The spear is very long, even longer than Aranea so be careful when posing Aranea with her spear, this spear might poke your eyes and it will probably be more painful than Sephiroth's Masamune.

Helmet - front part

The helmet (or visor) comes in two pieces, front and back. The front is a grilled visor with a long horn.

Helmet - back part

The back have a long tail, it looks cool but not practical for a Dragoon-class warrior.

Assembled helmet

If you combine these two parts it forms the helmet that looks serpent-like.

To equip this helmet. You need to remove Aranea's bangs then attach the front part of the helmet. Next, remove the tiny ponytails at the back of Aranea's head then attach the helmet's back part. Secure the back part by attaching its tabs on the tab holes of the front part.

That helmet looks sick!

This is what it looks like if you equip this to Aranea's head. She looks like a dragon.

That's a long tail.

The helmet is not that heavy but over time it will start to flop down to the back.

Those hands are pointy.

The gripping hands have tight grips, they can hold the spear without any problems while the open hands are for gestures and other poses.

Display stand

Aranea performs a lot of aerial attacks and moves because she's a Dragoon. So you'll definitely need this display stand if you want to pose her like she's doing her own Jump attack.

ARTICULATIONS

Looking down on her prey.

Aranea's design is like a double-edged sword. Her articulation points are mostly hidden, but her design might limit the movement range of some of her joints.

Just standing around...

Aranea can look around just fine, but can't look up really high because of her collar. The neck articulation adds more range for the head to move and Aranea's collar hides this joint. The helmet/visor might limit the head's movement range.

"Hi, I'm Aranea Highwind"

Torso parts, like the chest have a nice leaning range without any gaps. It also looks seamless when you pose it. The waist also moves well.

She's suggesting something.

The arms features a hinge-ball peg on both shoulders. The length of the joint is shorter than Cindy's and their movement range is pretty good, but can produce some gaps when you pose them. Both arms have bicep swivel.

Just chillin'.
See how tall that spear is?

The elbows and wrists are ball-hinged. They move pretty well, that's good. And the wrist ball-hinges looks good on this figure.

The pose from the box.

Leg articulation works pretty good, The left skirt-mantle doesn't hinder the left leg's movement because it's cut in two pieces. Anyway the legs can raise up and sidewards nicely and a bit to the back.

Aranea's ready to fight.

The knees are double-hinged and it looks good because the kneepads hides the joint.

[left] The iconic Kain Highwind pose.

[right] Jump attack!

The right knee is pretty stiff on this figure that I got, I have to force it to bend the knee.

Spear thrust!

The boots' movements are surprisingly good. The top part of the boots are separate pieces that hides the ball-hinges but they also make it difficult to correctly pose the feet because you can't see the ball-hinges.

Holding the spear on two hands.

Other moving parts are the long capes behind Aranea and the tail part of the helmet. They all have ball-hinges for articulation.

Going for a two handed spear thrust.

SCALING

This Aranea figure looks really tall when you're looking just at her. Let's see how her height will fare compared to other PAK figures that I have.

I wish I have Noctis' bros too.

Aranea's height comparison with the other FFXV figures that I've got, like Noctis, Lunafreya, and Cindy shows that Aranea is the tallest among the girls and about the same height as Noct thanks to her heels. I also included Nanamo (FFXIV) in the group.

Hanging out with the FFVII group.

Sephiroth and Barret are taller, while Cloud and Tifa are about the same height as Aranea.

Aranea with a couple of people from Ivalice.

Both Gabranth and Fran are taller than Aranea which is good...

Wow, she does look similar to Lightning. But it's the other way around.

...while she's awkwardly taller than Lightning (LR:FFXIII) and the super short, Serah (FFXIII). Nice scaling comparison between her and Sora (KH3D) and Riku (KH2).

With the Variants by Nomura.

Catwoman (Variant) is taller while Hatsune Miku (Variant) is shorter than Aranea.

Aranea with a bunch of non-Final Fantasy characters.

Aranea have another nice scale comparison with, Raiden (MGR), Lara Croft (RotTR) and Harley Quinn (B:AK)...but not with Leon Kennedy (RE6) who's shorter.

QUALITY ISSUES

Before buying this figure, you must inspect the toy first because some figures have some defects on the face like inaccurate paint job or in rare cases a warped face sculpt. I compared three Aranea figures to find the 99% perfect one.

Dang it!

Another issue is that one of the fins on the smaller end of the spear got detached.

Dang it! - The sequel.

At first I thought it was broken, good thing that it just got loose. Maybe the glue applied on it is weak. I just applied a very small drop of super glue on the fin's tab to reattach it. It's a simple fix but come'on, SQEX!?

CONCLUSION

Another FFXV character added to my collection! I'm happy to have Aranea because I think a lot of people will pick her up because of her character design and accessories (her spear looks amazing). The paint job is really good overall. But some parts of the figure might break if it fell down 3 to 4 feet high. The articulation design mostly works really well and most joints are hidden or seamless when posed. The price though, I guess it's justified just by how much plastic used on this figure, not to mention the detailed sculptwork. If you got the cash then pick this figure up.

By the way, here's another toy comic!

Aranea's annoyed because she thinks Lightning ripped off her style.

This comic features Lightning (FFXIII-2), Lightning (LR:FFXIII) and Aranea Highwing.

Cheers and Happy Collecting!