This Week in Anime

Previously On Final Fantasy VII

Steve
Lucas, I'm glad you could join me for today's discussion. And I'm thrilled we're doing it a few days early because, by the time this column goes live, I will be gone. I will be a dust in the Midgarian wind. I will be in my materia cave. I will be playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and not even Meteor itself will be able to extract me from my couch.

In the meantime, let's wind back the clock and look at some children of the advent variety.

It's Nomura's world. We're just living in it. And thankfully, there's no shortage of interesting angles to look at Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children from. First announced over 20(!) years ago, this 2005 film (and the 2009 complete cut) has garnered the entire gamut from fame to infamy. Is it a satisfying slice of service for longtime FFVII fans? Is it a blight on the series' legacy? Is it a long cellphone commercial? The debates rage on.

Some of you young folk out there might not get it, but trust me, in the mid-aughts, this was the coolest a cellphone could be. We didn't know any better.

Seeing as we are on an anime site right now, however, I think it's appropriate to look at Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children as a piece of animation, and specifically one in the context of Square's past dalliances with bringing the Final Fantasy name to the medium. Remember Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals? Remember Final Fantasy: Unlimited? Well, they're old and not streaming anywhere, so most people probably don't!

I won't hand much to Square Enix, but I will give them some meager kudos for never attempting a straightforward Final Fantasy anime adaptation, a la the Persona ones. Someone on that team understood it would never work. Legend of the Crystals was a very distant sequel to FFV, and Unlimited did its own thing. Irrespective of their quality (which I can't comment on anyway, having seen neither), I admire that approach. However, something changed to make them cash in on fan fervor with a direct sequel like Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. While I can only speculate, I have to imagine that a big factor was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

Adorable. And actually, completely different studios made both movies! Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was produced primarily by the now long-defunct Square Pictures, founded in Hawaii as part of Square's ambition to get its foot on the Hollywood scene. So Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within also technically isn't anime by some definitions. What is indisputable, though, is that the movie went over budget, bombed spectacularly, shuttered the studio, and indirectly cemented Square's eventual merger with Enix.

Put another way, there might not have been an Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children if not for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within's failure.

Let me answer that question with an anecdote. I first played FFVII in middle school, which is the perfect time for a person to play it. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children then came out when I was in high school, which is also the perfect time for a teen to watch it. So I'm in the sweet spot for FFVII mania. I was the target audience. I was excited! And because I just had to see it, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is the thing that taught me how to torrent a movie. I must have first witnessed it as a low-res Realvideo file slowly downloaded over dial-up, surely just as Nomura intended.

That being said, I remember my feelings being mixed at the time. I needed to trawl a lot of fan websites to understand why Sephiroth split into three weird bishies named Kazoo or whathaveyou. But that was okay because that's what I did on the internet back then. It was a simpler age.

Well, it's worth remembering that Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was announced as part of the larger Compilation of Final Fantasy VII project. So, as far back as 2003, there was no doubt Square Enix had every intention of milking that cash cow as much as they could. And I think the initial fan excitement cooled when none of those follow-ups recaptured the magic of the original game.

I'd wager that Crisis Core has probably enjoyed the best retrospective reputation out of all of them. But honestly, I'd put Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children second. Rewatching it in 2024, I see a strange and imperfect sequel with many baffling choices, but I also appreciate it a lot more. It's full of contradictions in a pretty interesting way.

Not to keep harping on the past, but you really gotta put yourself back in your 2005 shoes (mine were Converse All-Stars) to appreciate everything it was bringing to the table. While it's easy to take for granted in this post-Remake era, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children showed us these beloved characters in glossy HD, with feathery hair, cracked leather, and all manner of faithfully recreated Limit Breaks. It was an unfathomably wide jump from the game's cutscenes, which were not even a decade old. You could easily perceive the advances in CG technology and fidelity back then, and that was a huge deal.

And where would we be as a society if they had not used all that advanced computing power to make Reno hot?

Oh for sure. If the last decade of game development has proven anything, "more" graphics don't automatically equal "better" graphics. And Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is a far more muted affair than the game, lacking the vibrant colors of those examples above. It fits, though, because Cloud spends the first hour of the movie moping like a misbehaving puppy who got bopped on the nose.

Yeah, the main issue I have with Cloud's emotional arc is that it doesn't jive with what the rest of the film is concerned with. Like, if the whole film were moodier, or if the whole film had more dumb Final Fantasy spectacle, it'd probably work out to be better either way. As it exists, Cloud's development is undercooked, and the action in the first half feels like it's intruding on the story. But I also think that tension makes Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children a more interesting specimen! And when it comes to Final Fantasy, I'm looking for interesting stuff. Good things are overrated.

This important emotional moment, where we hear the rest of the party chime in with support for Cloud, happens as a cellphone—the sponsored tie-in cellphone nonetheless—sinks to the spot where he laid Aerith to rest—well, that's a weird way to frame it! Gauche, even! I like it!

Man, though, it is hilarious that the crux of the movie is "somehow, Sephiroth has returned." That factor alone is responsible for all of the dumbest storytelling decisions in this, but they had to do it. There was simply no other way.

When the film's second half kicks into gear, though, I can't bring myself to complain about much. It morphs into a 45-minute action scene that is almost straight gas start-to-finish. It goes all-in on the fanservice, throwing treat after treat at the audience's gaping mouths, and I'm right there with them, gulping everything down.

And let's not forget they pop spring-loaded out of his motorcycle. Genius shit.
Thank you for mentioning the soundtrack, too. This was back when Nobuo Uematsu had his The Black Mages band, whose arrangements made the hard/prog-rock influence on his compositions even more blatant. The piano arrangements are nice, too. I downloaded the sheet music for them and practiced those all the time back in high school.
For me, the best setpiece in the film is the whole party, one-by-one, heaving Cloud into the stratosphere so he can bisect Bahamut. It's incredible. A ridiculous triumph. A succinct but affecting way to depict the strength of their teamwork, creating a bonkers yet unforgettable moment. I see so many commenters who complain about or poke fun at the film's lack of proper physics, and I know they possess no joy in their hearts.

Can't lie, I got a little verklempt when Tifa looked into a drop of rain and thanked Aerith. When the film's on-point, it does manage to find the nuances in how we commune with the people who have left us.

Then, the credits song is somehow written by Gerard Way. Peak 2000s energy. No notes.

So would I say that Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children in 2024 is peak cinema? No. But it holds up better than expected. Through adult eyes, the film's flaws are way more glaring to me than in 2005, but I'm also way chiller about that stuff than I was in 2005. So it all evens out, but more in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children's favor. I love the highs and laugh at the lows. It's a fun two hours, and it was a nice, familiar appetizer before I brace myself for whatever metatextual horrors Rebirth has in store for us.

When it comes to Dirge of Cerberus, I think Cloud put it best: