Ryushikaze
Deus Admiral Parsimonious, PHD, DDS, MD, JD, OBE
- AKA
- Tim, Ryu
A lot of CA "merch" is just Cloud and Aerith merchandising sold separately. Ryu can probably infer better than what I can but there were a lot of lies spread by Western CAs to make people believe they absolutely were canon or seen as canon back then. As early as the beginning of the 2000's you had Itadaki street where CAs pretended the game was CA when it's a lot more CT.
In the case of Itadaki Street, the claims that the game "canonized" CA were literally based entirely on the fact that the two walk together in the opening sequence. The in game banter between the two mostly revolves around Tifa. Aerith gets flirty with a DQ8 character instead.
But yeah, a lot of the merch western CA's push as being exclusively Cloud x Aerith coded just isn't. Like, their best argument is the one pepsi bag that has CA and SR on it. There are some items that depict the two in iconic scenes- primarily Aerith's death- but there's also that for CT, and when it's not specific scenes, like for example, character figures with themed bases, It's Zack who matches bases with Aerith, not Cloud. He, naturally, matches with Tifa.
Another absurd claim involved the Artnia menu, which they claim only has "matching" Cloud and Aerith desserts and nothing Tifa related at all. Not only is this not true- It has a Yuffie one as well - but the entire cafe is Tifa themed. The fucking Napkins are 7th Heaven marked (The Cutlery is also Shinra company stamped) and the entire fucking kayfabe is that Tifa made all the food and the drinks for you.
Then there are the weird lies about Clerith parks and tiger cubs, and of course the infamous Wacdonald's interview.
Also if you want to open a massive can of worms we can talk about Dirge's marketing and merch.
And also specifically note that the date sequence can feature several of his companions, and ALSO also make a section specifically for examples of non-romantic love just to disambiguate and ALSO ALSO ALSO put the full text of the 'high' highwind scene as one of the four most impressive scenes in the game in the same Ulti....If you knew how to analyse medium, the game absolutely told you it was CT that was the canon pairing. I got out of my first playthrough thinking that, and I was taken by the illusion of CA - even if I hated it lol. It's just that people absolutely refused what the game told them for some, have played rather young so didn't understand the game or have played only once and only have vague souvenirs.
When SE puts Cloud and Tifa with the other canon pairs on an Ultimania and people still deny that they are canon, then it's not on SE anymore I'm sorry.
Anyways, I can go on.
Oh yeah, talking about Cloud and Tifa's love, favor, relationship etc. all the fucking time.
Also, even "Figure it out for yourself" Nomura said as far back as 97 that the multiple date options were for the player to get more scenes with their faves, because if you leave it to just the plot, you're always stuck with Tifa.
This has been my rant. Maybe I'll come back and give a more coherent argument on why merch and marketing is at best, coincidentally correct and should be ignored at the best of times.