Cloud’s Character Arc In A Single Sentence

According to the short story "Picturing the past" the people in black cloacks (aka the Sephiroth clones) have the tendency to reunite at the Sector 7 train graveyard.

The train graveyard is located next to Sector 7 station, the place where Tifa found Cloud right before the beginning of the game.

The meeting with Tifa triggered the creation of Cloud's alter ego: SOLDIER-Cloud.

It may be just a coincidence but this mural is exactly in front of the station and next to the train graveyard

"Use your imagination"

"Shoot for the stars"

Such nice details!

Parallels 

Truth

A little WIP to celebrate

Aerith's birthday ❤️🌸🎉

FFVII Remake Easter Eggs - Part 2

SPOILER ALERT! Spoilers about the FFVII compilation.

FFVII Remake includes a lot of Easter eggs referring to the whole FF7 compilation. This is the second post, and it will include the references to…

Crisis Core is a PSP game released in 2007. It’s a prequel to FFVII and focuses on the adventures of Zack Fair.

1. RUDE BEING…RUDE.

“Haven’t seen him before. He your new boy toy?” Rude is referring to Zack, Aerith’s boyfriend at the time of Crisis Core. Very…rude though (Chapter 8).

2. THE PUPPY

- Angeal used to refer to Zack as a puppy.

- Stamp the dog is a new misterious element added in the Remake. He’s a beagle, but at the end of the game, when Zack survives, we see it changing in a terrier.

Are you Zack the puppy? My son wrote to me once about you, zero attention span, restless as a little puppy.

3. BANORA WHITE

- There are some billboards of “Banora White” apple juice in Midgar.

- These fruits only grow in Banora, and the juice was invented by Genesis.

4. DATING

Aerith asks Cloud to be her bodyguard in exchange for one date. Yes, this was already in the original FFVII but the gesture is taken from Crisis Core (Chapter 8).

5. SELLING FLOWERS

- Zack suggested Aerith to sell flowers and they started selling them together in Evergreen Park.

- Aerith and Cloud arrive in Evergreen Park and she remembers the time she used to sell flowers there (Chapter 9).

You know, a long time ago, I used to sell flowers here.

6. YOUR EYES

In Chapter 9 Aerith stares at Cloud’s beautiful eyes the same way she did with Zack. In Japanese Zack and Cloud answer with the same sentence.

7. PINK DRESS

- Zack asked Aerith to wear something pink when they would have met again.

- The pink dress has always been Aerith’s distinctive mark since 1997, but her optional outfits in the Remake, that were not in the original FFVII, are pink too (Chapter 9).

From now on, why don’t we make a promise every time we meet? (…) For example, when we meet, you always have to dress in pink.

8. TRAINING ROOM

- The training room was a virtual reality simulator used by SOLDIERs in Crisis Core.

- Cloud, Tifa and Barret find a battle simulator in Shinra HQ in Chapter 16.

9. PROJECT S AND PROJECT G

- Hojo says he wants to breed Aerith with S and G type SOLDIERS.

- In Nibelheim Mako reactor Genesis told Sephiroth about Project S and Project G. The first gave birth to Sephiroth, the second to Angeal and Genesis. Project G was also used to create Deepground SOLDIERs (Chapter 16).

CC: “Jenova project G gave birth to Angeal and monsters like myself. Jenova project S used the remains of countless failed experiments to create a perfect monster.” 

FF7R: “We could have the Ancient reproduce. (…) I would start with candidates from SOLDIER. These would of course include S and G types.”

10. CELLULAR DEGRADATION

- Genesis was a failed experiment and his body kept degrading irreversibly.

- In Chapter 7 President Shinra, after noticing that Cloud is a SOLDIER, points out that SOLDIERs usually die pretty soon because of cellular degradation.

Once a SOLDIER, always a SOLDIER. Though not, alas, for very long. Accelerated cellular degradation being the most common cause of death by far.

11. KUNSEL

- Kunsel was a SOLDIER and friend of Zack.

- When some infantrymen see Cloud and recognize him they say they’ll go and call Kunsel (Chapter 16).

Cloud? You’re Cloud, right? (…) We went through training together. (…) Hey, sit tight man – I'mma go get Kunsel.

12. BARRET’S LAST STAND

“Worst route ever. Gimme a suicidal last stand. At least– At least–at least that’d have an end!” Barret says this sentence while climbing Shinra backstairs, at 49th floor – SOLDIERs floor. It’s a reference to Zack’s last stand (Chapter 16).

13. FREEDOM

Before entering in the dimensional portal Aerith says that beyond it there’s “Freedom. Boundless, terrifying freedom”. It reconnects with Zack’s iconic sentence before his last stand “The price of freedom is steep” (Chapter 18).

14. THE SKY

- In Crisis Core Aerith told Zack that the real sky frightened her.

- At the end of the Remake Aerith says “I miss it. The steel sky”, referring the upper plate that covered the real sky. In Japanese she says “The  sky…I hate it”, because it took away from her Zack and her mother. (Chapter 18).

15. THE DEFEAT OF DESTINY

- Zack had a dream in Crisis Core that foreshadowed his death. He was looking at the sky wishing to have wings like Angeal.

- In the Remake he defeats his destiny and looks at the sky in the same position (Chapter 18).

16. ZACK’S LAST STAND

This iconic scene is replicated shot-for-shot in Chapter 18

PART 1 (BEFORE CRISIS)

PART 3 (ADVENT CHILDREN)

PART 4 (DIRGE OF CERBERUS)

PART 5 (ON THE WAY TO A SMILE)

PART 6 (THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: A TURKS SIDE STORY)

PART 7 (PICTURING THE PAST)

PART 8 (FINAL FANTASY VII - 1)

PART 9 (FINAL FANTASY VII - 2)

PART 10 (EXTRAS)

Sephiroth:

Mass murderer

Child soldier

Lab experiment

Demigod

Enemy of humanity

Actual child

Monopoly host

High school student

Uninvited Smash attendee

Udon salesman

Impossible to take seriously anymore

This might be the cutest FF VII lore fanart I've ever seen

oopsie, sketched some quick ff7 stamps bc i thought the idea of shinra making Stamp stamps was silly, and then i just had a great time playing crisis core reunion so here we are!!

so annoyed i couldnt remember if there is any unique identifiable flora to nibelheim, so i just decided cloudberries would be a good substitute since they are a) pretty damn hardy, b) punny and c) very tasty. these are based on stamps i vaguely remember from childhood, very cool!! :)

i hauve a cold

Great post!

I guess the problem and the cause of all these (convenient) misinterpretations is indeed her persistent presence in the compilation. Or better, all the characters are present in more or less all the entries but she is the only character who is always shown indissolubly linked to Cloud. Which is what bothers part of the fandom.

If her physical presence can't be ignored, the only other way to make her "unharmful" is to try to diminish her relevance in the story.

But is there a greater proof of her importance than the fact itself that fans need to spend so much energy in twisting her role to make her seem an ininfluent or even a villainous character?

So the Lifestream sequence becomes unimportant, she's irrelevant, she's bully, she's insensitive, she's just fancervice, she gets rejected, she's a rebound, she lacks a character arc...let alone Case of Tifa and Advent Children... She is just there watching the other characters playing their roles.

The question is: does it ever work?

Because whenever the fandom spent too much effort spreading misinterpretations SE took advantage of the following entries to debunk them. Remake is no exception.

And it's just part 1.

Tifa is important to the FF7 story (OG and Remake) straight up due to her abundant, consistent involvement in the story—you know, the actual events of what is being written. She has more than this, but that’s the most basic level that a character can be important to a story….by simply being a prime force within it. Get out of here with anything even less than this as this understanding shouldn’t be skipped over.

“Being Important” in storytelling is something I think people perceive very weirdly in fandom for characters. Importance can be judged on different levels, but the level of that for characters should be looked at on the level of story involvement first and foremost.

Any character that is one of the protagonists, a part of your party, and literally is involved and thus affects and interacts with all story beats—something so basic needs to be understood as important. Tifa is one of the heroes, she’s on the journey from the beginning and continues throughout…you can’t get any more straight forward than this for the story. Describing it as “just being there” or “occupying space” is just stupid, I won’t sugarcoat that honestly. And the interaction she has in the story obviously goes beyond that of just “Cloud’s love interest”. She’s not just standing around, T-posing in the background while being that, and it’s a gross view of how that information is even expressed in the story itself. Any good writer that has a character interacting so much with the story [actual events] is bound to have them interacting with plot [the “what”/overall story event chain that sets the “what”] , if not the overall narrative [”how and why”/purpose of plot and structure], eventually. That’s not always the case, at least directly anyway, but even in those cases it can be examined on a micro level. But even if it doesn’t track to the line of narrative, this won’t stop them from having an involvement with story and plot if they’re included all the way through these things.

Now granted, especially in an extended series, there can be a difference between being an “important character” and being “important to a story”. Both Tifa and Cloud aren’t the primary characters in Dirge of Cerberus or Before Crisis, but obviously they still remain to be important to FF7 (OG and Remake), AC, or even Crisis Core as their roles there interact directly with key plot points for FF7. So like, still, “Tifa isn’t an important character” doesn’t stand to be a thought from a knowledgeable mind of the series.

★MASTERPOST★

Please do not reblog as this is subject to constant updating

Easter eggs and compilation continuity

NB: This part includes a series of article I had already posted with my other - now deleted - account. Some of the trivias come from the Remake Ultimania, for which I highly recommend to check (and support) this amazing English fan translation.

Part 1 - Before Crisis

Part 2 - Crisis Core

Part 3 - Advent Children

Part 4 - Dirge of Cerberus

Part 5 - On the way to a smile

Part 6 - The kids are alright: a Turk's side story

Part 7 - Original FFVII - 1

Part 8 - Original FFVII - 2

Part 9 - Extras

Theories

Aerith's legacy

My beloved Wutai

Sonon

OG vs Remake

Main characters (visual comparison)

Affection mechanics

LTD related stuff

Tanabata