Commentaries
There are many ways to experience FF7 and other Final Fantasy Media. Essays, forum posts, the community play throughs, and the live streamed races held between members. Another way is the recorded audio commentary track, for a game, a movie, or even a TV series. These offer something of a between states of the at leisure nature of a forum post or essay and the utter immediacy of a community play through or race. The reactions are immediate and entirely off the cuff, with no filter, no prep work, and no delay between thought and speech.
And that’s what makes them so excellent.
TLS Let’s Play
The TLS FF7 Let’s play is Pixel’s baby, and as such, updates according to his schedule, in between his work on the Audiobooks and the other 9000 projects he seems to be working on. Updates are slow, but like you’d expect from Pixel, always of good quality. The series is a mix of humorous comments, nostaligc recollections, and occasional insights from Pixel and the other commentators. The entire series so far can be found, collected, on Youtube.
Let’s Play FFVII, YouTube Playlist.
Fan’s Eye View Series
The Fan’s Eye View series is my- Ryushikaze’s- pet project. Currently taking the form of fan made commentary tracks for the various Animated works of Final Fantasy, the series is somewhere between a proper director’s commentary and an MST3K style riff track on the film at hand, and as such, a mix of information on the series, fan discussion, speculation, and jokes of all sorts is to be expected. All the episodes are distributed in MP3 format for legal reasons, though Pixel was kind enough to synch our Last Order commentary up to the original video.
Last Order
September 5th, 2010
The First commentary track done by myself, Forcestealer, and Tennyo, and currently the only commentary with the presynched version, which we have thanks to Pixel. The subject matter is the short film Last Order that was packaged with the Special Edition of Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children.
On the way to a Smile: Episode Denzel
October 9th 2010
Episode Denzel is the story of Cloud and Tifa’s adopted son as he goes from living an oblivious life on the plate as the child of a ShinRa employee to losing everyone he could consider family several times over, until he is finally found by Cloud and made part of his family. As mentioned, a lot of the commentary on this one focuses on some odd design decisions, including hair and a focus on REALLY detailed backgrounds.
Advent Children: Complete
December 9th 2010
In 2005, Square Enix released Advent Children. Five years later, they asked for a do-over, and we decided to provide the Commentary for the English speaking world. Humble of us, wasn’t it?
This commentary covers an extreme range of subjects from discussing the nature of Voice Actor role shock, to the narrative symbolism of Cloud and Bahamut’s matching scars, to dumb jokes about whatever comes to mind. I thought it was a blast to make. Hopefully you’ll find it half as fun to listen to.
Advent Children Complete Commentary
Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals
Wind Chapter, January 19th 2011 – Fire Chapter, February 5th 2011
Dragon Chapter, March 6th 2011 – Star Chapter, March 18th 2011
The last Commentary to be just me, Force, and Tennyo, but a good one. Force and I- who have seen the series before- expose Tennyo to the series completely blind, getting from her a series of hilarious reactions and unique opinions as a result. Also my heaviest editing job to date, due to my needing to manually add dead air between each of my own comments in the last 45 of the commentary after my recording software decided that such things were too silly to keep. I recommend the full version, linked below, rather than the episodic format the series was originally released under.
Final Fantasy Legend of the Crystals Complete Commentary
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
june 9th 2011
The movie that ended Square as its own company, due to its abysmal returns. Force, Tennyo, forum member Tifabelle, and I give it what I feel is a fairly equitable going over, and address what we all think are the key issues that prevented this movie from succeeding, not the least of which was the name itself. Also, I gush endlessly over technology, and fanboy over Steve Buscemi a lot. Good times.
FF: The Spirits Within Commentary
Final Fantasy Unlimited
Started, February 3rd 2012
So, Final Fantasy Unlimited. I saw this series when it first came out, when it got translated, and now. I’m still not quite sure what to make of it, I just know that it’s a hilarious show to watch, and often for all the wrong reasons. Dubbed ‘Final Fantasy Unlimited Penetration’ by my fellow commentariat (and yes, I know that’s not a real word, shush), it’s a weird meandering show about utterly useless protagonists repeatedly saved from a messy demise by the taciturn and mysterious Anti-Vincent, Kaze, wielder of the Magun and the series’ most bizarre summon magic. Each episode is a trip. Often times an acid trip, but a trip nontheless.
Episode 1 & 2
Episode 3 & 4
Episode 5 & 6
Episode 7 & 8
Episode 9 & 10
Episode 11 & 12
Episode 13 & 14
Episode 15 & 16
Episode 17 & 18
Episode 19 & 20
Episode 21 & 22
Episode 23, 24 & 25
So what’s next? Well, there are other games in the FF7 compilation, and they’re just sitting there, begging to be riffed on, so who knows, we might just see some Dirge of Cerberus and Crisos Core commentaries in the near future.
