A new video has been added to the official Japanese Dissidia Final Fantasy site showcasing an exhibition tournament amongst the various game designing staff. Major thanks to Hitoshura for translating their names here. Below you can read who the staff participants were, and the winner, if you can’t see the video yourself. It’s a very interesting watch to see how the creators themselves measure up in playing their own game.
(more…)

Thanks to our forum member, Danna, below is a translation of “On the Way to a Smile: Case of Tifa” that has been revised in the new On the Way to a Smile novella released concurrently with Advent Children Complete. The new changes have been put in bold so that readers will be able to easily see what has been amended to the novella. A big thanks to Danna for her hard work in doing this for fans! Also, since she used Xcomp’s translation as a base, a big thanks to him and his website for the hard work he’s done translating the original edition of this novella as well. Enjoy!

EDIT: As of 5/18, Danna has gone through the text and edited a few spots to clarify the translation and smooth out the readability. Just to clarify, so enjoy!

(more…)

On its first week of sales in Japan, FFVII Advent Children Complete sold 272,000 units, 40,000 of those being the Cloudy Wolf PS3 bundle. Not only is this impressive for a Blu-Ray re-release/director’s cut, but it affected the sales of the PS3 console significantly.

The Advent Children Complete PS3 bundle with the FF XIII demo gave overall PS3 purchases a noticeable boost in sales last week in the process. The week before last, 16,701 PS3 consoles were sold. On the release week of ACC however, the PS3 sold 62,527 units, beating out the PSP, Nintendo DSi, and Wii.

Compared to AC’s original sales figures of 420,000 in one week, this is rather good for a Blu-Ray exclusive release.

Source: FF7AC Reunion

and

Source: IGN

The Japanese Square Enix Members site has released a new feature that allows you to send your friends Advent Children Complete greeting cards, complete with CG illustrations and sounds from the movie.

So if you’re feeling particularly dorky and are a member, send your friend a matching ACC greeting card! Because nothing says “I love you and hope you’re well” more, than Cloud impaled on the Masamune, writhing in pain and misery on the tip. There’s no word on if this will ever come to the US Square Enix Members site, yet.

Source: FF7AC Reunion

With the changes and additions that have been made to Advent Children Complete, there are still some more things to see. Comparing the re-rendered and upscaled scenes from the Blu-Ray side by side to those of the original DVD have given a look at some more subtle alterations that make a big difference to the film. Clearer images, slightly altered expressions, as well as other changes can be seen below. The Advent Children Complete screenshot on the left, is paired with the original Advent Children image to the right. The last page holds a full gallery of 32 side by side images.

Advent Children Complete --> Advent Children

BluRay --> DVD

Check out the full list of images by following the link at the end of the article to see the list of changes, and check out the screenshots in full size. A huge thanks to our member CloudStrife1992 for getting the screenshots and compiling the images together.

(more…)

With copies of Advent Children Complete surfacing on torrent websites, Square Enix has made an official announcement regarding the matter on their Japanese website. The following is a rough translation of the announcement.

Square Enix Co., Ltd. Headquarters: Shibuya-ku, Tokyo.
President: Yoichi Wada

April 21, 2009

The Blu-ray video quality version of “Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete” was released on April 16th, 2009. Since it’s release Square Enix has taken measures to prevent and remove the illegal copies, such as monitoring, sending out letters, and other measures required to remove the media. As of today, multiple Internet video sites, have confirmed the deletion of all the files that were requested to be removed. Square Enix will continue to monitor the illegal uploading of “Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete” and take action against those engaged in piracy in the film, including legal action, to ensure that those involved are held responsible.

Intellectual property rights are one of Square Enix’s most important resources. Our business is built on the support of everyone of its products and services to our fans. To ensure that we will be able to continue to meet the expectations of everyone of our fans, and to continue to provide high quality and exciting entertainment experiences, we must take decisive action against the malicious acts that infringe on our intellectual property rights.

※ Company name that is mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Source: Square Enix

According to some sales reports, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete sold extremely well it’s first day, selling about 100,000 copies. The movie outsold the first 3 Blu-ray anime releases of 2008 (Macross F Frontier 1, 2 and 3) being an extreme success to both SQEX and Sony.
One fact that probably pushed up ACC’s sales was the Final Fantasy XIII demo, that was released exclusivesly with the movie (the Trial Version set and the Cloud Black PS3 bundle). A hint of what’s to come for it’s release on PlayStation 3 at the end of the year.

Source: Kotaku

The movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete features many altered and added scenes that flesh out and enrich the film’s visuals and narrative compared to the original Advent Children from 2005. In this article, we’ll look at and analyze the changes and additions to the film, paying specific attention to the new and altered scenes. Next to the new and altered scenes, all existing scenes have been given a makeover – the characters have been given more details, specifically in terms of clothing, and extra effects such as dust and dirt have been added to existing scenes.

In this post, there are over a hundred high-definition, PNG screenshots. Enjoy!

(more…)

A preview of the music video of Advent Children Complete’s theme song, “Safe & Sound” by Gerard Way & Kyosuke Himuro has surfaced on youtube featuring a large portion of the end of the song for those that have not heard it yet. The single is set to be released on iTunes on April 29th.

Thanks to XwingsofaresX for the news tip.

For the last few days since the release of Advent Children Complete, random tidbits of information, scene changes and images have appeared in the ACC spoiler section of our forums. Since today, the movie has also appeared on various torrent sites, such as Tokyo Tokoshan. It’ll only be a matter of time before the movie will appear on other torrent sites and piracy channels.

UPDATE: The movie (as well as On the Way to a Smile: Episode Denzel) has also appeared on the popular torrentsite The Pirate Bay, whose owners were sentenced to a one-year prison sentence and 30 million krones (about 2.7 million euro) fine just yesterday. From the descriptions of the two, both seem to be Japanese language only without subs, but I can’t be sure about that with the ACC torrent.

A lot of people have already been able to watch the movie through importing the Blu-ray from Japan, and have shared their experiences on our forum. Coming up is a post that lists the various changes and new scenes in the movie – and there’s quite a lot of those.

The movie is still scheduled for an official release on June 2nd in the US, and June 10th in Europe. You can pre-order the US version of the movie – if you can work up the patience – in our shop.

UPDATE, April 19th: The .torrent from The Pirate Bay was removed just several hours after it was put on, for as of yet unknown reasons.

A new torrent has appeared on DaTorrents, a four-part BD rip weighing 4.8 GB which, according to the description, has the English dubs.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete was released yesterday (April 16), and today some pictures from Japanese stores started to appear on the internet. Click here to view them.

(more…)

A few images from the Square-Enix Members’ Virtual World Event celebrating the release of Advent Children Complete and the Final Fantasy XIII Demo have surfaced showing AC Cloud, as well as a tv in the background showcasing an image from Final Fantasy XIII. Click here to check out other three images.

Virtual World Cloud

Source: Cloud180

(more…)