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A look at the top 100 Final Fantasy VII videos on YouTube

cold_spirit

he/him
AKA
Alex T
I decided to take a look at the most popular FF7 content on youtube in an attempt to find something new to watch. I was also curious how viable youtube is as a form of rudimentary data collection. My process began with firing up the site, searching "final fantasy vii", sorting the results by view count, cracking open google chrome's development tools, copying each thumbnail's aria-label, then organizing and categorizing the data in excel. The following lists are the result. And yes, I did find something nice to watch!

I performed my youtube search at around 9:30am AEST, August 1st, 2020. I only collected data on the top 100 results.

Top 5 Final Fantasy VII Videos
  1. Final Fantasy VII - E3 2015 Trailer | PS4 by PlayStation (15,895,942 views)
  2. Final Fantasy VII Advent Children - One Winged Angel (Music) by BizkitMusic (14,539,989 views)
  3. Pointy Bits (Final Fantasy 7 Parody) - Oney Cartoons by OneyNG by OneyNG (10,259,244 views)
  4. Final Fantasy VII - One Winged Angel by Dean Thomson (9,283,208 views)
  5. PlayStation Experience 2015: Final Fantasy VII Remake - PSX 2015 Trailer | PS4 by PlayStation (8,605,335 views)
Note that One-Winged Angel takes up 40% of the Top 5 list (we'll see just how important music is to FF7 in a bit).

Top FF7R Trailers
  1. E3 2015 Announcement Trailer (15,895,942 views)
  2. PlayStation Experience 2015 Trailer (11,749,769 views)
  3. Final Trailer (4,994,849 views)
  4. E3 2019 Trailer (4,718,377 views)
  5. Theme Song Trailer (4,650,985 views)
  6. Tokyo Game Show 2019 Trailer (4,263,568 views)
  7. State of Play May 2019 Teaser Trailer (2,979,581 views)
  8. The Game Awards 2019 Teaser Trailer (1,307,005 views)
For this list, I combined the view count of each trailer's multiple official uploads. I find the difference in view count between Remake's 2015 uploads and its 2019-2020 uploads to be interesting (12-16mil compared to 4-5mil). I think that shows how much the hype cool-downed during Remake's three and a half year absence. It's fun to imagine if Remake was announced at E3 2019 with a release date just nine or ten months away. Yeah, it probably would've been leaked at that point, but I don't think most casual gamers follow leaks. I think perception of Remake would've been very different.

Oldest Video

Percentage of Videos by Era
  • OG 44%
  • Remake 39%
  • Compilation 17%

Top AMVs
  1. Final Fantasy 7- Charlie Brown Jr - O Rappa - Clipes Animados VOL 4 by Maoful Nue
  2. Final Fantasy VII - This Is War by Fox93lz

Top Animations
  1. Pointy Bits (Final Fantasy 7 Parody) - Oney Cartoons by OneyNG
  2. Final Fantasy 7: Machinabridged (FF7MA) – COMPLETE Season 1 - TeamFourStar (TFS) by TeamFourStar
  3. The Simple Plot of Final Fantasy 7 - ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEO by Starbomb Collab by David Toons
  4. Final Fantasy 7: Machinabridged (FF7MA) – COMPLETE Season 2 - TeamFourStar (TFS) by TeamFourStar
  5. The simple plot of Final Fantasy 7 ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEO - Starbomb (With Lyrics) by Myhr
  6. Final Fantasy VII In a Nutshell! (Animated Parody) by RABtoons

Top Covers
  1. Final Fantasy VII - One Winged Angel Acapella by Smooth McGroove
  2. Final Fantasy VII - Battle Theme Acapella (Let the Battles Begin!) by Smooth McGroove
  3. Final Fantasy VII「Tifa's Theme」Remake & Original Version - Ru's Piano | I, Tifa, have a PIANO ? by Ru's Piano Ru味春捲
  4. [OJV] Final Fantasy VII - J-E-N-O-V-A & Sephiroth - Live Orchestra by L'Orchestre de Jeux Vidéo - OJV
  5. Final Fantasy VII Remake - Aerith's Theme - piano version by Grim Cat Piano
  6. Final Fantasy VII - Those Who Fight - Ru's Piano | When Tifa played FF7 Battle Theme ? by Ru's Piano Ru味春捲
  7. Final Fantasy VII - Let the Battles Begin / Those who fight (Gingertail Cover) by Alina Gingertail

Top 5 Scenes
  1. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Sephiroth vs Genesis vs Angeal (3,548,107 views)
  2. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children - Tifa vs Loz (3,339,156 views)
  3. Final fantasy VII - Post-credit scene (2,591,368 views)
  4. Final Fantasy VII Remake - Honeybee Inn dance sequence (2,516,643 views)
  5. Final Fantasy VII Remake - Opening Movie (2,215,445 views)

Most Viewed Gameplay Moment
  • Final Fantasy VII's final boss battle (5,025,534 views)

Most Viewed Reaction Video
  • E3 2015 - Final Fantasy VII Remake and Shenmue III Reaction Gametrailers (GT Live) by SomeGameNews

Top Recap Videos
  1. Final Fantasy VII Complete Story Explained by Xygor Gaming
  2. Final Fantasy 7 in 7 Minutes by IGN
  3. LORE - Final Fantasy VII Lore in a Minute! by LORE
  4. Cloud Strife's Origins Explained (Birth to Hero) ► Final Fantasy 7 Lore by Final Fantasy Union

Top FF7R reviews
  1. Final Fantasy VII Remake (dunkview) by videogamedunkey
  2. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Review by IGN
  3. Final Fantasy VII Remake Angry Review by AngryJoeShow
  4. Final Fantasy VII Remake - Before You Buy by gameranx
  5. Final Fantasy VII Remake | Girlfriend Reviews by Girlfriend Reviews

Most Viewed Speedrun
  • Final Fantasy VII by ajneb174 in 7:48:04 - SGDQ2017 - Part 125 by Games Done Quick
Article by yours truly!

Percentage of top videos that are just soundtrack uploads
  • 22%
Top 10 OG Tracks
  1. One-Winged Angel (27,523,944 views)
  2. Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII (4,912,425 views)
  3. Fanfare (4,436,449 views)
  4. Let the Battles Begin! (4,299,650 views)
  5. Fight On! (3,583,603 views)
  6. J-E-N-O-V-A (3,524,138 views)
  7. Aerith's Theme [HQ] (2,283,804 views)
  8. Opening ~ Bombing Mission (2,212,060 views)
  9. Prelude (2,050,689 views)
  10. Birth of a God (1,910,857 views)
I also combined uploads for this one. One-Winged Angel at 27mil+ views is impressive. I've always felt that OWA is the king of FF7 tracks, but now I see it's the king of FF7 content.

cold_spirit's Top 5 Picks (no particular order)
After all this, I ended up watching Girlfriend Reviews' video on Final Fantasy VII Remake. Highly recommend it. It does a great job earnestly conveying the impact of the OG while taking shots at Remake.
 
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