Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII for Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2016 by Tetsuya Nomura
In my own honest opinion: This is where Lightning goes to die. Why is she relevant, her series was one of the worst ones marketed for terrible acting and premise, but plenty of other Final Fantasy heroines could have fit the bill. They chose Shite-ning instead. This is just a sad attempt to get Lightning relevant again, must be a game coming out soon or something, can’t really justify choosing Lightning over the other heroines, especially since their games didn’t completely fucking tank.
Hi! I want to clarify a few things for you:
- Lightning is relevant because she had a game released last year and numerous cross promotions, she’s in a recent arcade game and is generally considered to be the representative of Final Fantasy as a franchise post-Cloud and pre-Noctis. Despite vocal minority reactions, and in Japan, Lightning is a well-loved character (as evidenced by the fact she spawned three well-received games).
- Lightning is also relevant because she was designed by Tetsuya Nomura, the man (a director and artist at Square Enix responsible for the Kingdom Hearts franchise and the character designs of FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFXIII, FFXV) that Louis Vuitton collaborated with for this campaign.
- No other Final Fantasy heroines would’ve been fitting - LV designed the clothes here, and they flatter Lightning (she holds up the emblazoned bag with the prominent L) far more than any other Nomura character. In addition to this Lightning already had a Visual Works CGI model that was up to date - used for FFXIII: Lightning Returns last year. It would’ve been more costly for LV and less successful if Visual Works had to produce a new model for Yuffie or Selphie. Why spend more money to commission Visual Works for an animated commercial with a less famous/instantly recognizable character? Even characters like Aerith are most likely only to be recognizable in-fandom now, considering discrepancy between appearances.
- There’s no new game featuring Lightning as a main or side-character other than Dissidia, a new arcade game that features characters from all of the main series titles and at least one spin-off.
- The FFXIII series did not tank, with the figures we currently have XIII has sold 7 million copies worldwide, XIII-2 has sold 4 million (together the same amount as X/X-2) and LR has sold around 2 million copies despite being a late-generation second sequel! These three games are amongst the most successful in the franchise.
Hope this helps clear up a few things for you! Send me a message if you have any more questions.
I didn't know they did stuff like that for vg characters! She looks so cool!