Ryeleigh
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- Rye
To be honest, all of that made me so happy that I don't interpret media through tropes, lmao.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.
You know, when I first played FF7 OG, I thought CA was canon. I'd read it online somewhere and I didn't really have a reason to doubt it. But then I got to the point where Aerith died and almost immediately I realised I'd been lied to, lol. I didn't even have to see all the CT moments. By the time I started FF7 OG, I'd already read/watched plenty of Japanese works and very, very rarely do these stories leave their MCs hopelessly pining after their love interest. The second male lead? Sure. Sometimes to a creepy degree.
And the sad thing is that they'd rather keep being wrong years after the thing ended than just admit they were wrong and ship their ship like everybody else.The problem then is that of people are not delusional, but what they are is obstinate. They guessed one thing, and they are very sore about guessing wrong.
Also, a few random observations of Rebirth: the game mirrors Aerith and Tifa a lot. If you think about how the canon couples mirror each other, too, Nojima seems to like that. Interestingly, so far CT moments have happened under the starry sky or at night while CA moments have happened under fair skies, lol. It's kind of sad that the side quests only happen between Cloud and a party member. I get that it probably would've been too much work to have them all interact with each other during them buuuut I'm selfish, I wanted them all to have bond time, lol. Or at the very least, let them stay behind so we can see what they'd do outside of Cloud-sphere instead of them all hanging in the background not doing or reacting to anything, lol.
The streamer I've been watching did Aerith's Costa del Sol fake date quest first and right afterwards Tifa's gym quest. And honestly, the contrast between these two quests almost felt cruel.
With Aerith, Cloud was basically stonewalling her. For example, Aerith asked what kind of swimsuit he'd like and Cloud started blithering about preferring function over form like such a twerp. Like, you were supposed to compliment her and say what kind of swimsuit would suit her, lol. But it was absolutely hilarious how turned off Aerith was by his answer, lmao. And their alone time ended on such a sour note too, with Aerith calling the date DOA otherwise and Cloud calling her mean.
It's not that he doesn't like her and it would be false to say that. He obviously does like her. They had such a nice, cute moment at the beach right after Hojo and the clones. But oh my god, they just don't seem to click romantically. I mean, it makes sense since they're both in love with other characters (even if the other isn't necessarily aware of it and the other is in denial/trying to move on) and they're not supposed to click romantically, lol.
And then in Tifa's quest, Cloud was basically all "OMG! Tifa! Please tell me everything! I'd love to listen! Yeah, me too! " Not to mention all the laughs.
So that's that so far, lol.
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