With the release of Street Fighter IV this week, there's no better time to present to you Kaiyodo's Chun-Li, from their new Street Fighter Online series of Revoltech figures. This is a joint project between Kaiyodo and Capcom under Good Smile Company, to crack open the wallets of Street Fighter fans and help promote Street Fighter Online.

Subtitled Mouse Generation, the new SFO is apparently some new PC iteration of Street Fighter that is played with -- you guessed it -- a computer mouse. Uh ... yeah. Don't look to me for answers on how that's supposed to work. What I do know is that, like many of you, I'm a massive Street Fighter fan, and I'm delighted to see these characters make their welcome debut to the world of Revoltech. Hit the jump for some of that action with my full review.  

The box art is nice and fiery, and maintains that Street Fighter feel. If it looks a bit different from your average Revoltech packaging, there's a reason for that --

Chun-Li is teeny. Really teeny. I'm not sure how I missed the memo on this, but I had no idea the SFO Revoltechs were so small. I guess I just saw that Street Fighter characters were on the way and that was good enough for me. Who knew?

She's non-scale, but if I had to take a guess, I'd put her at about 1/12. Still, she manages to look mighty, even at this micro stature. The overall design is undoubtedly Chun-Li through and through.

Of course, the smaller the scale, the more unsightly the joints and the lesser the detail, but we'll get to that in a minute. Her points of articulation match that of your standard Revoltech, save for the wrists; with the hands hinged on pegs that can spin inside of their joint to be turned to the desired position. This is the only part of the figure that doesn't use a Revolver joint, and to be honest, you may not even miss it. These get the job done, and at this size, you might even be thankful the Revolver's not there. 

As noted, she's jointed at the neck, waist, hips, knees, feet, shoulders, elbows and wrists. That's an awful lot of articulation for something that's not much bigger than a trading figure, and it's evident that the team at Kaiyodo have done their best to hide these joints as best they could. 

Her dress is of a more flexible vinyl to allow for a wider range of movement and positioning, and has a hole in the back to allow for the attachment of the included base for those really dynamic poses.

For as small as she is, the paint job is more than acceptable, and they've even managed to apply her eye makeup to the face and give her those earrings of hers. That's Chun-Li alright.

No mistaking her with those appropriately meaty thighs.

But as you might imagine, small figure = big joints. It's hard not to find yourself wishing this was a larger Revoltech, especially considering the alternate faces and parts this would allow for. Close up, she's awfully robotic-looking. Fraulein this ain't. 

Thankfully, the joints have been very well taken advantage of, and her shoulders are of particular interest. The Revolver joints are inserted into the torso at an angle ...

So that no matter how you pose her, she looks like she's about to beat someone's ass.

The base is stamped with the SFO logo, and is a nice tinted, translucent plastic that doesn't pull too much attention away from the figure when in use. It allows for all sorts of aerial poses, which we'll get to in a minute. 

Also included is this fireball, for Kikoken-ing purposes.

The only alternate parts are the hands, again making it hard not to wish for a bigger figure with more swappables. I would have liked to have seen at least a peace sign for her classic "Yatta!" victory stance.

It doesn't quite work as well with a fist.

Regardless, with a little base tomfoolery, you'll have no trouble recreating most of her signature poses. 

Such as the Spinning Bird Kick, albeit with a gravity-defying dress.

For the most part, the base will allow you to send Chun-Li flying through the air in any pose you can dream up, without having to worry about keeping her feet planted. 

Overall, it's a great figure, and a fine addition to anyone's Revoltech collection. Doubly so if you're a Street Fighter fan, and it's pretty awesome to have a little Chun-Li around the house. 

While I do wish a bigger version were available, there's no sense in complaining. I'll take what I can get, and considering Capcom has seen to it that these figures will never be released in the US, I'm more than happy to have her just as she is. Importing is your only option if you're looking for one, and even then, they're still pretty hard to find. 

Chun-Li still makes for a great figure, even if her stature makes her a little less threatening than usual.

Even Hachune isn't afraid to face off against her.