I think I am a bit weird, my favorite characters (in order of awesomness) are:

Vanille - Lightning - Hope ._.

I don't see anything wrong about them, I really liked Vanille and the voice wasn't irritating at all. Hope was kind of a brat but he's just a kid and halfway through the game it becomes really likable.
Lightning is special, see I played Dissidia 012 first and I really despised her, but after playing XIII I must say I love lightning and her unusual name :P

Fang was the best character. Loved her design, she's really good in battle, hits hard and has a nice accent.

There is also an easier way to farm adamantoises. You use a similar method of wasting a summon, hasting yourself, slowing it etc. Then you simply have Vanille cast Death again and again. The vast majority of the time you 1 hit KO the adamantoise before it even stands up. If you are feeling brave you can even try and just fight them without using a summon, just hope Vanille's death kills them first lol.

Oh also just tried the FF-13-2 demo.... better than the entire game of ff13. Seriously for years I have been saying that Square-enix should switch the Tri-Ace team and FF team. Giving the Tri-Ace team the massive budget etc. They step in to help with the next final fantasy game and it becomes FAR better. Heck they made Star Ocean 4 a billion times better than FF13.

So in my mind with J-rpg developers we now have Tri-Ace, Monolith, Tales studio and Mistwalker who are outdoing the FF team. Please please someone give one of those studios a 5 year development time, vast budget etc etc.

Vanille reminds you of Vanille...? Yeah- I can see that.

Yes but as far as I'm aware it's pretty much still the exact same team. It's just they have been brought in company. The tales games are still performing pretty well and I suspect we will get another one from the same team pretty soon. At least I hope so since they have made so many fantastic games. 

I think the Tales team are similar to Monolith Soft in that both never really got as appreciated outside Japan as they deserved. Along with Tri-ace all three of them have been constantly pushing J-Rpgs battle systems into fantastically interesting places. The Tales series with it's almost 2d fighter style, Tri-ace with it's action hack and slash style and Monolith with BK and its immensely fascinating card battle system. Seriously Baten Kaitos is such an under appreciated gem. Utterly beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds and such a unique and interesting battle system. Manages to be a card system but also fast paced and very strategic.

Gah. I was talking to someone while typing this post. Thoughts got jumbled.

She reminds me of Rikku from Final Fantasy X. They have such a similar personality. There's no way you can like one but not the other.

Yeah there is!! Rikku had smarts and was cunning, Vanille is just a ditzy dolt 

Riiiight. I'm thinking you need to go back and play X again. They're very similar and I'd agree that Vanille was more intelligent.

You really do get them confused don't you?

Yes I agree Rikku was also "happy go lucky" but she wasn't annoying when she did it.

I have played X recently and I can tell you that Rikku came off as a teenager that was sometimes overly hyper.

Vanille comes off as a nutcase that orgasms with every other sentence.