Why Did Sephiroth Take Jenova's Head

Gameplay and Story Segregation (laconic) said:

Game mechanics don't apply to cutscenes and dialogue.

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We don't really know for sure whether or not Sephiroth's legs were intact. If they were, they indeed didn't want to flash Sephiroth's goods. If they weren't then Mr. Ite's explanation's as good as any other.

Yeah, that was mostly a joke...

Are you telling me that Cloud is giving his black ball to a naked man? That causes an earth killing meteor to punish humanity for their sins. Sounds like 1950s Louisiana.

If you want an innuendo filled description of that, there's one on tvtropes.

Mind Rape page said:

Final Fantasy VII had Sephiroth doing this to Cloud to the point where he could no longer function. He needed "rape counseling" from Tifa in a Journey to the Center of the Mind before he was able to do anything at all.
There's even a Does This Remind You of Anything? scene in Gongaga where Cloud's lying on a bed, clearly severely traumatised, while the others try to convince him that what Sephiroth forced him to do wasn't his fault and doesn't mean Cloud wanted it. Let's add into this the way Sephiroth tells Cloud 'I am always by your side', and the bizarre sexual symbolism of Cloud being forced to find Sephiroth's Materia coffin in the centre of a pink, pulsating, ring-shaped structure, and penetrating it to give him the Black Materia.

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I think he took it for sentimental more than rational reasons, honestly. You can work backwards and look for reasons it would have been beneficial to him but honestly I think it's giving him too much credit to suggest he acts with that kind of foresight.

He was "going to see his mother," after all. Almost everything he does and decides to do in Nibelheim is driven by some emotional need or another. Why wouldn't it make sense to take a piece of her with him as he left?

Or perhaps... Jenova's head took Sephiroth!!!

All right I'll shut up.

You all seem to think that Sephiroth at that point was a rational being whose actions had some kind of sensible motive or defined purpose. He took the head because he was crazy, and that's the kind of thing crazy monsters do - yank the heads off their dead mothers. Also it made for a really good visual.

Even insanity has a logic to it, even if that logic is irrational.

Can logic be irrational? Maybe he just wanted them to be together, and he couldn't carry all of her so took the most important and portable part?

LicoriceAllsorts said:

Can logic be irrational? Maybe he just wanted them to be together, and he couldn't carry all of her so took the most important and portable part?

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In a sense. Logic is simply the construction of linguistics in such a way that statements made with it are internally consistent, and as such, sound.
What's rational on the other hand, is what logically follows from a set of values.

For example, what's rational to a person who wants to die, is not rational to a person who wants to live and vice versa, but it's possible for both of them to have logically sound arguments for how to pursue either goal granted that we accept their core values.

Sephiroth might be mistaken in his view about his background and his relationship to Jenova - but his logic might be sound and could make rational sense if he was right.
Whether he's right or not however, isn't a matter of logic, or reason - it's a matter of empirical inquiry which is something else entirely.

As for why Sephiroth took the head -
Because he couldn't bring all of her, and since, as I've gathered, Jenova isn't actually a person, but a virus/parasite of sorts, it doesn't really matter what part of it you take as long as its infected with the cells.
The human-shaped thing is, as far as I understood, just a human(or ancient) host that hosts "Jenova".
And with that being said, looking at the shape of the host in the glass, it doesn't seem like there are many other parts that would be easy to cut off and bring along.

As for buster sword not splitting Sephiroth in half - I am pretty sure it doesn't mean anything at all.
It's just a result of devs and writers not really giving a damn "becuz vidya gamez".
Writers go -
"Cloud back-stabs Sephiroth and mortally wounds him, unfortunately you (designers) gave Cloud a ridiculously broad sword, but hey, we also have battles were machine-guns do damage that's next to inconsequential, so whatever right? It still looks kinda awesome if nothing else."
Sakaguchi goes *thumbs up* and that's it.

Ripping his mom's head off doesn't seem like that good of a substitute to a proper meeting which Seph wasn't given the time for. I guess I'll just hand it to Seph's craziness at that point.

Or the info he read in Shinra Mansion's basement revealed of Jenova's properties and thus taking Jenova's head was actually a logical decision.

Mr. Ite said:

Actually it doesn't do anything to the plot. the head is never seen or mentioned after that, and the mystery as to why is never solved.

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Actually I believe the head is featured in Advent Children as the means by which Kadaj becomes Sephiroth (Spoiler). I can only assume that the head remains in the Northern Crater after you defeat Jenova Synthesis, as it is alluded to by Kadaj and Rufus, though I don't believe we actually see it.

I know this is an old thread, but I just wanted to add in a little thing that also always kinda confused me about this (I think a lot of it is purposefully left open-ended, it's just one of those "FF7 Mysteries" things we don't get all tied up). Even though we kind of think of Jenova as having "died" in a sense after the battle with the Ancients, after which (during the main game) she operates with/via Sephiroth from the Lifestream, she was actually just sealed up. Then Shinra digs her up, starts extracting and messing with the cells, blah blah blah.

But what I'm getting at is, Jenova was alive in there, right? I mean, we've established she's an instinctual, virus-like being, but alive nonetheless. So he opens the chamber, and cuts the head off this super-powerful creature that gave him his powers in the first place without any kind of struggle? I mean, couldn't she have technically left on her own with him? Or is she supposed to be in some kind of 'coma' even when freed from the chamber stasis?

SeraphSephiroth said:

Actually I believe the head is featured in Advent Children as the means by which Kadaj becomes Sephiroth (Spoiler). I can only assume that the head remains in the Northern Crater after you defeat Jenova Synthesis, as it is alluded to by Kadaj and Rufus, though I don't believe we actually see it.

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I think it was probably just a piece of Jenova leftover from the battle, not necessarily her head. I forget where it was mentioned, but I'm pretty sure there was mention in canon somewhere of Jenova's 'head' just being a good name to call it, when really all that was in that little case was probably just a piece of her flesh or something.

leadmyskeptic said:

I know this is an old thread, but I just wanted to add in a little thing that also always kinda confused me about this (I think a lot of it is purposefully left open-ended, it's just one of those "FF7 Mysteries" things we don't get all tied up). Even though we kind of think of Jenova as having "died" in a sense after the battle with the Ancients, after which (during the main game) she operates with/via Sephiroth from the Lifestream, she was actually just sealed up. Then Shinra digs her up, starts extracting and messing with the cells, blah blah blah.

But what I'm getting at is, Jenova was alive in there, right? I mean, we've established she's an instinctual, virus-like being, but alive nonetheless. So he opens the chamber, and cuts the head off this super-powerful creature that gave him his powers in the first place without any kind of struggle? I mean, couldn't she have technically left on her own with him? Or is she supposed to be in some kind of 'coma' even when freed from the chamber stasis?

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Hmm.... Well if she was alive and awake, she wouldn't stay there in containment, I don't think. She's probably slip out and try to either sneakily devour the life on the planet again or try to do it in a huge brawlfest.
I got the sense that she is either in a coma, or perhaps she's both alive and dead; as in, her cells are still alive, but her mind is decayed/decaying. She's able to live on through her cells and is able to exert control over them, but it's probably weaker than when she was at her height of power during the battle with the Cetra.

TLDR; So actually, I'm not really sure. Whatever the case, her cells are alive, and she does exert control over people/her cells at certain times.
She's either in a coma/stasis or something like that, I think.
Maybe the tank she's in puts her in a coma, and she has no need to move her weird body after Sephiroth because he took some of her cells/head with him already?

Having invested quite a lot of time into researchGoogling about Jenova, I personally conclude that Jenova's mind is permanently dead. This is why Sephiroth, a being with Jenova's DNA, is able to control Jenova's cells remotely.

So Jenova was not actually constrained in Nibelheim Mako Reactor, she was simply positioned that way for the heck of it. I suppose Shinra would give a good care to a sentient being that happens to be the source of their strongest military power - SOLDIER - as well as someone who is believed to be the key to the Promised Land. Later she's dumped into a tub.

Well, at least one of the guidebooks (but I'm pretty sure more than one) says that Jenova awakens again because of Sephiroth, and speaks of her as operating with him. Often times in these books, the two of them are referenced interchangeably even.

I think we can conclude the Cetra left Jenova in what was effectively a coma, but lacked the means to properly destroy her at the time.

Yeah, I always assumed that the chamber was continuing to keep her in some kind of stasis/coma, thus all of the elaborate wiring and machinery seen inside of it humming away, along with the layers of what look like medieval imprisonment armor that Sephiroth rips off when he flips out. It just seems like, if she was dead rather than frozen, it'd be a little strange for her to be grinning through the glass like that, in again what seems like something that was "flash" frozen in the midst of movement (but maybe I'm just seeing what I already assumed). We don't get a huge amount of description as far as I know as to how the Ancients did what they did, just that they managed to "seal her away", and that later when she was dug up she was found inside of a "geological stratum". I wonder if the Japanese for "Seal her away" says anything different?

I figured the wiring was likely to collect her cells for experiments without having to move her around much, as well as circulating mako into the tank.

I've always assumed that Sephiroth was just crazy at this point, and also very mis-informed. He believed himself to be an ancient, along with Jenova, so perhaps he thought that removing the head would have some beneficial effect, again, he clearly didn't understand the truth behind Jenova.

Okay, so I'm playing through again, and I've reached the Nibelheim flashback while the party is in Kalm, and upon reading through this thread, I have pieced together a theory that I thought might be interesting to you guys.

It makes a ton of sense to me for Jenova to be a virus or viral entity of some sort. I'll take that and run with it. It's also been posited on this thread that the body we see in the Mt Nibel reactor is simply a host to Jenova. What if the Jenova virus works by taking control of the host's brain, and in this case, using any psychic abilities(latent or active) possessed by the Cetra to network to other Jenova cells, typically in other hosts? Thus, the body itself would be a Cetra as Dr Gast's notes say? Also, it would explain Sephiroth taking only the head as it would be the only part of the body he would need in order to exert control over other Jenova cells. Also, if in fact one of the functions of the wires and tubes used to "store", for lack of a better word, Jenova/host was to pump in Mako, it could have kept the host in a very precise state of Mako Poisoning that also supressed the functions of the Jenova cells. This is why the reunion takes place when it does because the Jenova infested brain of the hose couldn't reach out to/control other Jenova cells due to the Mako Poisoning. Am I missing anything? Did I miss a point where Jenova cells are controlled while the host is still in the Nibel reactor? Just piecing together some thoughts for everybody to chew on. Hope this helped/was enjoyable. Thanks for the awesome thread!

(NOTE: I haven't read any part of this except the thread question)

SPOILERS! (Although, it has been like 10 freaking years, so if you haven't played it by now, then you're clearly in the wrong place, no offense).

As far as I remember, Sephiroth was never even around until the end of the game when he is given the Black Materia from Cloud in the Crater. If I'm correct, Sephiroth throughout the game is actually just a Jenova cloaking effect, where a part of her appears as him.

But then again, maybe I'm wrong, that is all I remember.

(I plan on refreshing my memory when I play FFVII again this week)

WinglessACCS said:

(NOTE: I haven't read any part of this except the thread question)

SPOILERS! (Although, it has been like 10 freaking years, so if you haven't played it by now, then you're clearly in the wrong place, no offense).

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It's been nearly 20, man

WinglessACCS said:

(NOTE: I haven't read any part of this except the thread question)

SPOILERS! (Although, it has been like 10 freaking years, so if you haven't played it by now, then you're clearly in the wrong place, no offense).

As far as I remember, Sephiroth was never even around until the end of the game when he is given the Black Materia from Cloud in the Crater. If I'm correct, Sephiroth throughout the game is actually just a Jenova cloaking effect, where a part of her appears as him.

But then again, maybe I'm wrong, that is all I remember.

(I plan on refreshing my memory when I play FFVII again this week)

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The question is in reference to the flashback where the real Sephiroth goes insane and travels to the Mt. Nibel Mako Reactor to meet his "mother" Jenova. He then gets wounded by Cloud, takes Jenova's head and finally is thrown into Lifestream by Cloud.

The reason why Sephiroth ripped off Jenova's head and carried it off with him is all very simple and easy to explain. As good old Norm would put it, "A boy's best friend is his mother." Just that Sephiroth is no where near as sympathetic as Norman Bates.

I love the diversity of opinion here!

I tend to think that what was found in the reactor was Jenova's real body, but not necessarily its natural form, just the one she wore when infiltrating Ancient society to bring the mutating virus. After all, she started by impersonating the dead, then appeared in person as a false friend, and then her 'virus' started turning people into monsters, which is likely to be her using retrovirus-like abilities to physically rewrite them, the way Genesis does in CC.

(Sephiroth claims Jenova can just shapeshift in general but the context in which he does so renders the statement hella unreliable.)

Whatever the Cetra did to seal her, it seems to have shut down her ability to take direct physical action from that point forward. Whether she might have regained it had Shinra not hooked her up to such an apparatus after digging her up is *shrug.*

Whether she was conscious or not at any point really depends on how you want to read character motivations, but Sephiroth cracking up in the specific way he did makes a lot more sense if she was in his head. The fact that she is a severely unsettling corpse doesn't affect his affectionate monologue.

And if she was communicating, it's likely she conveyed that reuniting with any large piece of her was good enough for alien monster fusion purposes. In which case Sephiroth was just choosing his preferred bit now that the original happy families plan had been so rudely interrupted.

The head is both the most person-like part and the one that looks most like him, since he seems to have inherited the hair. Makes as much sense as anything.

What I like/hate about the Buster Sword stab in CC is that they animated Cloud holding the sword the wrong way around. The blunt edge is the one in Sephiroth's side. I don't even know if it was on purpose or not.