After consuming an ungodly amount of anime/manga when the world shut down in 2020, I feel like I understand these fans better. As it turns out, anime watchers can safely turn off their brains most of the time. Throw a dart at a random story with multiple love interests while knowing nothing about the actual plot, and you can still guess the "winner" 80% of the time based off tropes, character design and the front cover.
Now that I know what a
Cherry Blossom Girl is, I can see why they're so fixated on Aerith's floral theme, symbolism and Japanese culture. Throw in
First Girl Wins,
Bodyguard Crush and
White Magician Girl and in most other stories, her romance armor would be more powerful than Great Gospel. Thanks to Advent Children we know that
Her Death Was Only The Beginning leading to the opportunity for
Eternal Love.
Meanwhile Zack is a
Romantic False Lead and Tifa also gets forced into less flattering tropes, as if they're trying to bind evil spirits. She gets played up as
Clingy Jealous Girl as well as
Fanservice Character, which combined with the Highwind scene spells her doom because you
Can't Act Perverted Toward A Love Interest. There's also the angle that she's
Loving A Shadow claiming she never knew the "real" Cloud, or
In Love With Being In Love if you squint hard at the Promise. And while the
Childhood Friend Romance is a common trope, it's a bit of a crapshoot really with no guarantee of a
Relationship Upgrade.
Some argue that Japanese tastes aren't obvious to western fans, and I've found that to be true to an extent. Example: I never understood why
kuuderes are so popular, but apparently there's a reason Rei Ayanami's been cloned (heh)
in a million other shows. Of course this has also been weaponized by gatekeepers who insist Japanese fans are the true audience and Tifa just isn't appealing to them because... black color scheme represents the number 4 or <insert some other Destiny Fulfilled explanation here>.
Tropes and framing exist for a reason, and I don't think most fans are delusional idiots. The problem is that writers know how we think, and the only way to surprise us is to subvert our expections. That's exactly what FFVII does. The tropes that were set up all get blown sky high. After the second act all bets are off, and we shouldn't be letting symbolism and expectations based on past experience do the heavy lifting. We should be saying: whoa, I didn't see that coming, now I'm awake and engaged and retracing my steps. Just who the hell is this Cloud Strife guy, really? And the way the Lifestream scene pays it all off is brilliant. But not everyone wants their expectations subverted, or to analyze FFVII like it's literature or film. They want escapism, a story with confident badass like Disc 1 Cloud, choices that matter, and a romance based on what they're already used to.