Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier

[Makoeyes987]

I literally don't get how this is a big fucking deal. My God.

It was an in-universe explanation for reused assets in a mobile Battle Royale game. Period. It's hologram danger room data. This is no different than pallette swaps of enemies being given elaborate lore/species details to hide the simple fact that developers hit their limit and now had to just reuse the same models and tweak them for added variety. Opera Omnia and Brave Exivus is nothing but recycled sprites and models but they gloss over that shit because it's fun. It's just a game.

Temper your expectations for the medium you're going into. Not every FFVII title or entry is going to be made to elaborate on the intricate lore and details of the world. See G-Bike and FFVII Snowboarding. If you can't handle a Battle Royale mobile game and it's lack of focus on setting and narrative depth for every mechanic it throws out, go play the Remake again which is literally what it's meant for in that regard.

 

[Theozilla]

I literally don't get how this is a big fucking deal. My God.

It was an in-universe explanation for reused assets in a mobile Battle Royale game. Period. It's hologram danger room data. This is no different than pallette swaps of enemies being given elaborate lore details to hide the simple fact that developers hit their limit and now had to just reuse the same models and tweak them for added variety. Opera Omnia and Brave Exivus is nothing but recycled sprites and models and but they gloss over that shit because it's fun. It's just a game.

Temper your expectations for the medium you're going into. Not every FFVII title or entry is going to be made to elaborate on the intricate tlore and details of the world. See G-Bike and FFVII Snowboarding. If you can't handle a Battle Royale mobile game and it's lack of focus on setting and narrative depth for every mechanic it throws out, go play the Remake again which is literally what it's meant for in that regard.

To be fair, some of the frustrations are coming from a place of feeling like the devs going out of their way to create lore for something like a mobile spin off game, is SE making a big deal out of something that shouldn't be a big deal. So it's become a recursive loop of making a big deal out a perceived big deal being made in the first place unnecessarily.

 

[ForceStealer]

Yes. It's dumb that they tried, but it also will not affect anything. And the vast majority of people that play it will have no idea of this interview or even wonder. It's not worth getting bent out of shape about.

 

[Makoeyes987]

It's not even "lore."

It's a friggin in-universe handwave. They didn't add any "lore," they simply referenced the bloody Crisis Core/FFVII-R Shinra Danger Room VR Training Room tech.

Like, who actually gives a damn about this, really? What does it matter? It's going to be a Battle Royale in familiar Midgar areas that are composed of assets recycled from the Remake. Maybe if it's successful they'll add more unique locations but again. It doesn't matter.

Did people get this confused over fighting High Seraph Ultima 20 damn times in Opera Omnia before meeting the "Colorless Queen" in Garland's Lost Chapter which is just Ultima doing a shopping spree at Hot Topic? It's the nature of games. Recycling happens and the game explains it away at times. Big whoop.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

@Theozilla
The flip-side of that is that *someone* is always going to ask how something fits into the broader narrative. Which... we know the First SOLDIER does. It's from the time-period before Sephrioth was in SOLDIER. Someone is going to ask how that works out with canon. How the devs respond... often determines how *much* Suspension of Disbelief will be need to make everything work. And as it turns out... the First SOLDIER needs basically none...

Saying "it's a VR simulation of how Shinra thinks Midgar works in the future" is a *good* explanation. In squares the circle in a lot of ways. We know from CC that VR training data is used to train SOLDIERs. Remake showed that Shinra has *really good* VR technology, that had to be developed *sometime*. It doesn't even retcon anything. It just says "they're using this technology you *already* know about".

I don't get why people are complaining about an explanation that *makes sense*. Is it because it's admiting that the Compilation World-building is a thing? Is it because it doesn't "add" anything new to the lore/world-building? I really don't get it.

 

[Odysseus]

I saw Aerith's church and I clapped

 

[Ite]

I’m just scratching my head at the “Japanese culture doesn’t value sensible worldbuilding” angle. Is Yatsumi Matsuno American, then? What about Cowboy Bebop? Full Metal Alchemist? Monster? I thought Paprika was more logically consistent (and all around better) than Inception. Evangelion was strange, to be sure, but I was convinced that the things that happened were, you know, happening because of in-world reasons.

NKN are the Michael Bay of Japanese storytellers. They start with explosions and work backwards to justify them. Failing to enjoy that doesn’t mean we’re clueless westerners ffs.

Edit: sometimes their approach works, I think the settings of VIII, X and XIII are quite rich, even though they are some of my least loved games in the series.

As yes, if the shadow realm and future VR and time travel were in the OG, I probably wouldn’t have liked the OG. FFVII was already a ceasar stuffed with garnish, and the “franchisement” of it has been like dumping milkshakes and junior mints all over it. Replaying FFIX and XII recently has reminded me that I’m not crazy, it’s quite possible for me to like a Final Fantasy without nostalgia goggles on, it used to be the norm for a FF story to reward me for taking it seriously.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Agreed, Ite.

@ Obsidian - if the technology purports to portray "this is what we Shinra peeps think Midgar will look like in the future", then I have no objections. (Although it's odd they should have foreseen a vision of such dessication and decay. You'd think their PT dept. would have been all over that).

But that wasn't my understanding. As it was explained to me, this technology purports to be able to literally see into the future and then create VR representations of what Midgar will look like. That's a very different kettle of fish.

Diminishing Aerith's Cetra connection with flowers and the earth by saying that flowers grow in the church because the Lifestream's close to the surface there is the real offense, though.

I care about it, Mako, because I like the entertainment I consume to be thoughtfully and carefully crafed, not a shoddy money grab. YMMV. I have as much right to care about it as other people have to not give a monkey's.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I’m just scratching my head at the “Japanese culture doesn’t value sensible worldbuilding” angle. Is Yatsumi Matsuno American, then?

So we're just gonna pretend we're still not sure if Ivalice is a planet, continent or make-believe fairytale storybook owned by a child now, huh?

As yes, if the shadow realm and future VR and time travel were in the OG, I probably wouldn’t have liked the OG. Replaying FFIX and XII recently has proven that to me.

LOL those fantasy plot devices were in both of those games. Are you serious?

Did you forget Zidane and co. travel in time back to the creation of the universe itself through Memoria in order to fight Kuja who intends to smash the very first Crystal that created existence? Memoria is nothing more than a virtual memorial recreation of all of life's memories.

FFXII has Mist which projects shades of the past in dense concentrations and illusions too. FFXII is one of the few FF titles that does not have any time travel, but Yatsumi Matsuno included that element in his other Ivalice titles. Hell, over half of every FF entry time travels in some form or fashion. That's how FF began.

And as for FFVII's future VR system... Bugenhagen's planet observatory and like, the entire Gold Saucer with their attractions exist. Cloud even puts on a VR helmet. And what is the Lifestream, but a realm where you can see the dead, get lost in people's memories in an illusory or virtual recreation, or virutally/spiritually fight your bitter rival for existence and determining the fate of the world?

But that wasn't my understanding. As it was explained to me, this technology purports to be able to literally see into the future and then create VR representations of what Midgar will look like. That's a very different kettle of fish.

It is not literally seeing into the future. That's not what they said in that interview. Hito just dissected Nomura's own dialogue in that interview a page ago and it's not Shinra actually "seeing into the future." It's virtual reality projection of a future fully built Midgar within a virtual simulation.

That's not actually seeing into the future ala clairvoyance. It's simply simulated reality. There's a difference.

 

[Strangelove]

i remember when the turks novel came out and readers' blog posts about the story started getting translated and people where talking about 'cloud's three daughters' but it turned out someone had misunderstood something and it was just referring to the time cloud dressed up to be one of corneo's brides with tifa and aerith iirc. i think you had some people even after that was cleared up being like 'but what about cloud's daughters'. the ffx-2.5 book might have had some similar weird interpretations? (as opposed to the true interpretation, which was me pulling various faces as i read it)

that kind of feels like what happened here, it's just a misunderstanding and it's not a big deal or some profound addition

idk where the thing about the church flowers is meant to be from, is that the livestream? oh man i don't want to watch the entire thing, pls ppl cite your sources with timestamps

but you can wear a turks suit, that's fuckin sick bro

 

[cold_spirit]

As yes, if the shadow realm and future VR and time travel were in the OG, I probably wouldn’t have liked the OG. FFVII was already a ceasar stuffed with garnish, and the “franchisement” of it has been like dumping milkshakes and junior mints all over it. Replaying FFIX and XII recently has reminded me that I’m not crazy, it’s quite possible for me to like a Final Fantasy without nostalgia goggles on, it used to be the norm for a FF story to reward me for taking it seriously.

I don't know, I feel like a lot of stuff from the OG gets a pass for no reason other than that we're already comfortable with it. Imagine if Midgar, Junon, or the Gold Saucer were introduced to the world today?

We'd roll our eyes at how on-the-nose Midgar is with its class division.

We'd joke that Junon's giant cannon is "over compensating for something".

We'd question the Gold Saucer. Like literally everything about it. Why is it built in the middle of a violent desert? Why is the only entrance a gondola in North Corel?

We'd point out the impracticality of it all and claim it's "style over substance". "It's nonsensical." "They're pulling it out of their ass."

Yet now we love those things. I'm gonna say it... I'm... I'm gonna say it. We the audience have matured, FFVII has remained the same.

 

[Ite]

I don't know, I feel like a lot of stuff from the OG gets a pass for no reason other than that we're already comfortable with it. Imagine if Midgar, Junon, or the Gold Saucer were introduced to the world today?

We'd roll our eyes at how on-the-nose Midgar is with its class division.

We'd joke that Junon's giant cannon is "over compensating for something".

We'd question the Gold Saucer. Like literally everything about it. Why is built in the middle of a violent desert? Why is the only entrance a gondola in North Corel?

We'd point out the impracticality of it all and claim it's "style over substance". "It's nonsensical." "They're pulling it out of their ass."

Yet now we love those things. I'm gonna say it... I'm... I'm gonna say it. We as an audience have matured, FFVII has remained the same.

I think a lot of early video games didn’t make sense, no justification required, jump on the mushroom, etc. It was a young genre and they were marketed as toys foremost. The FF series was instrumental in shifting that, game by game, towards a medium that has an “oscar bait” sub-genre. I agree with you somewhat, there are a lot of things in the OG I wince at when replaying. But... none of the examples you listed are things that I‘ve soured to. Midgar is awesome as hell, no more on-the-nose than Mount Doom or Darth Vader. It’s young adult fantasy, not a simulator. And Junon and the Gold Saucer are just more examples of humanity building *up* trying to appear clean and Jetson-like while the land beneath them is shriveled and poisoned. That’s pretty clear cut, I need no more convincing than that. If a new movie or game or book were to do that, I’d probably have just that reaction. There was a new movie (based on a book?) that was cities that were rolling around like huge sand crawlers, and I never saw the movie but, like, sure that kind of thing is an easy sell for me as long as it doesn’t contradict itself or beg for questions it can’t answer.

Edit: @Mako Hm, I think you misunderstand me. Let me explain: I like pickles, I like chocolate, I like cumin and whiskey, cayenne and cinnamon and beer and deep fried batter and teriyaki and milk. You can make lots of combinations there and most are synergistic, but have it all at once and things clash or are buried. In my opinion, tropes and fantasy elements are similar. I like stories of super soldiers, ancient magic and magical bloodlines, neon futurism, eldritch horrors from space, crystal magic, peasant uprisings, runaway princesses, memory implants, meteor apocalypses, nature/planet magic. That stuff is cool. Lots of those taste great together. Under normal circumstances, that’s already too many flavours, but most people I know who have played FF7, here and irl, would agree that FF7 OG blends all these tropes and elements well. Some of the tropes introduced by the ever expanding lore of FF7 Compilation are strong flavours, the literary pickle as it were. And by the merit of so many entries, I find there are just too many flavours for me now, full stop. Ain’t nothin wrong with likin it, ain’t nothin wrong with goin “ewww.” Same with the OG I suppose.

edit: sorry for so many edits :/

 

[Wol]

It's not about having or not crazy elements in it, but how much and how they are consistently established in the universe.

And if FFVII was crazy before, that's not an excuse to add more craziness, or else it feels overboard and dilluted.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I don't know, I feel like a lot of stuff from the OG gets a pass for no reason other than that we're already comfortable with it. Imagine if Midgar, Junon, or the Gold Saucer were introduced to the world today?

We'd roll our eyes at how on-the-nose Midgar is with its class division.

We'd joke that Junon's giant cannon is "over compensating for something".

We'd question the Gold Saucer. Like literally everything about it. Why is it built in the middle of a violent desert? Why is the only entrance a gondola in North Corel?

We'd point out the impracticality of it all and claim it's "style over substance". "It's nonsensical." "They're pulling it out of their ass."

Yet now we love those things. I'm gonna say it... I'm... I'm gonna say it. We the audience have matured, FFVII has remained the same.

I was introduced to FFVII as a mature well-educated adult, mother of two with a full time job. I saw all the things you mentioned when I played it, but none of them detracted from its greatness. The silliness was part of the joy. Gold Saucer defied all the laws of physics and no, they weren't going to explain why tourists had to pass through a decrepit tent town in order to access the world's premier amusement park. It was absurd, but it didn't nullify other parts of the game or its worldbuilding. Nowadays, they'd try to come up with some explanation and it would contradict 10 other elements in the Complication. Part of the problem is the increasing realism of FF's graphics: a world that looks real, ought to act real.

 

[looneymoon]

...not to interrupt the in depth kerfuffle about this, but uh... didn't remake already have a full CGI'ed cinematic in which the party sees a proposed future Midgar in a VR machine?

 

[KindOfBlue]

I’m just scratching my head at the “Japanese culture doesn’t value sensible worldbuilding” angle. Is Yatsumi Matsuno American, then? What about Cowboy Bebop? Full Metal Alchemist? Monster? I thought Paprika was more logically consistent (and all around better) than Inception.

Not that they don’t value it, just that their culture seems a lot more inclined towards the abstract (abstract from a Western perspective at least) and are perhaps more likely to accept this stuff as a result...it’s kinda like introducing friends to anime, there’s so many tropes that might be off-putting to Westerners (as there are surely tropes of ours that are off putting to them) so you might wanna consider easing them into it so that they get accustomed to it gradually. Shoot, even mobile gaming, a lot of us probably groan at the thought but it’s huge over there.

because I like the entertainment I consume to be thoughtfully and carefully crafed, not a shoddy money grab.

I’d be very interested to know how much of the OG was thoughtfully and carefully crafted versus how much of it was unintentionally poignant, especially in a time where decades worth of analysis videos and articles color our perceptions and make us think what we like is smarter than it actually is

It's not about having or not crazy elements in it, but how much and how they are consistently established in the universe.

And if FFVII was crazy before, that's not an excuse to add more craziness, or else it feels overboard and dilluted.

Unfortunately there’s no real way to quantify how crazy is “too crazy” seeing how differently everyone’s tastes are, when even in real life we’re constantly adjusting how we understand the world around us, so I’d hardly expect a fictional universe like this to be consistent. I think we like to tell ourselves we’re too smart to enjoy anything that isn’t logically sound so we make all sorts of justifications for its existence but it’s like...does any of that really matter in the end?

I was introduced to FFVII as a mature well-educated adult, mother of two with a full time job. I saw all the things you mentioned when I played it, but none of them detracted from its greatness. The silliness was part of the joy. Gold Saucer defied all the laws of physics and no, they weren't going to explain why tourists had to pass through a decrepit tent town in order to access the world's premier amusement park. It was absurd, but it didn't nullify other parts of the game or its worldbuilding. Nowadays, they'd try to come up with some explanation and it would contradict 10 other elements in the Complication. Part of the problem is the increasing realism of FF's graphics: a world that looks real, ought to act real.

But if those things did detract from the experience, would you be wrong for feeling that way? Because perhaps the explanation for the BR is just as negligible as those more outlandish elements of the OG for some, while others are pretty hung up on one thing but not the other

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Kindofblue, I don't know what you're driving at here. Are you trying to establish some kind of objective position?
I get it that you're coming from the POV that everything is relative and there is no absolute good or bad. I disagree, but I'm not interested in arguing that point in the abstract. I'm not interested in getting anyone to agree with me, either. I'm expressing my own position.
The point I was trying to make was that you claimed that people coming at FFVII OG with a mature perspective would find many aspects of it absurd, even deal-breakers. I'm replying that I did indeed come to it with a mature perspective, having previously played precisely 2 video games - Mario Kart, and The Adventures of Kid Mystic. I did indeed find a lot of the OG delightfully silly, but didn't feel those elements detracted in any way from the fact that it's a profound masterpiece. Does it really matter if it's a masterpiece by accident or design?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I’d be very interested to know how much of the OG was thoughtfully and carefully crafted versus how much of it was unintentionally poignant, especially in a time where decades worth of analysis videos and articles color our perceptions and make us think what we like is smarter than it actually is

There is a reason I keep bringing up these two articles. They are the closest thing I've found to the developers talking about their approach of making the game. And it.... certainly sounds a lot closer to the latter (unintentionally poignant) than the former.

Aerith's Death comes off like it was the most... "planned" event out of everything they talk about. You can tell they gave it some thought for how it was supposed to come off to the player in terms of emotional impact. But it's also is not mentioned when NKN are talking about what OG scenes really resonated with them as people.

Spoiler: Some highlights for "what our thought process was when coming up with stuff"...

Nojima says he based Cloud's "False Persona" off the "showing off" animation (swinging the sword around before sheathing it behind his back) Toriyama made for the first scene.
Kitase didn't know until latter stages of development that Cloud's "fake" memories were actually Zack's memories because Zack was never in the original scenario.
Zack was come up with by Nojima as Nojima was making up the FFVII backstory as he went in cut-scene creation.
Aerith seeing her first love again in Cloud was already part of the Scenario by the time Nojima joined. It was his idea to make that first love be Zack.
Forshadowing scenes for Zack were added depending on who was in charge of the scene (because some of them had an easier time changing things than others).
Red XIII was the fourth character Nomura drew because he wanted to have a four-legged character.
Nomura also came up with the name "Red XIII".
Akiyama thought of the name "Nanaki" as well as Red XIII's scenario at a later point in time.
Yuffie got a lot of cutscenes because Akiyama liked her. How she joined the party was his idea.
Vincent's cutcenes were put in because of Chiba at the last minute.
Chiba was given free reign to do whatever he wanted with the Gold Saucer.
Chiba and his team tried to implement everything they could think of in the Gold Saucer.
Chiba came up with Chocobo Racing.
The idea behind the Gold Saucer was "amusemnt park in the middle of nowhere in the desert"
Nothing in the Gold Saucer was plotted in advance.

I don't think anything quite sums up how much game development now is different compared to the days of FFVII like this quote does.

Back in those days, a lot of different tasks would be going on simultaneously during production, so there were a lot of cases like that where the other staff would influence each other. All the important stuff was usually decided by talking it over in the smoking room (laughs). Nowadays since you’ve got the voice acting to record, the scenario needs to be done first, so it’s turned into quite a lonesome task.

--Nojima

So the devs themselves are aware of how much creative development has changed in the industry and how that has chainged how the scenario has to be created. And the scenario was always a really important thing for FFVII.

Does it really matter if it's a masterpiece by accident or design?

It matters when you are making sequels (or related entries) of a work. If it was an accident it ended up as good as it did, then it will be very difficult to repeat "what went right" in the development process. If it was by design, then it will be much easier to do again.

It's hard to repeat something when the creator isn't quite sure how they managed to make something. Or when they acknowledge that how something used to be made isn't how they could make it today. The OG FFVII seems to have been a group project with a story and world-building a group of people were making up as they went. And with all the co-inspiration that happens when a group of creative people are passing ideas around. That sense of "making it up as you go" is viewed even by the creators as something... that really shouldn't happen again. And we have seen what happens when that goes very wrong (FFXVersus).

However, loosing the "making it up as you go" aspect along with that co-inspiration from... at least five other people than NKN is going to affect how everything after the OG feels. You can't just... "fake" that kind of thing in a creative process. So the FFVII stuff from after the OG has a fundamentally different creative process than the OG did. Expecting the same tone out of two different creative processes... you're only setting yourself up for disappointment in the long run.

 

[looneymoon]

I just played two Resident Evil games back to back, and that series is notorious about not giving too much of a crap about narrative and continuity and stuff. The FF7 franchise is at a similar spot where the sequels are just kind of made up as they go. The difference is that the FF brand has always been narrative-driven, whereas stuff like RE is more about gameplay and mood/tone. The mainline series never had to worry about anything outside singular titles, because it existed as an anthology series. The devs seem to be confused about whether to stick to trying to being congruous or not, because of the way the branding has evolved. They'd probably be better off just throwing it to the wall ala KH, but unfortunately fans expect something well-planned and well-structured story-wise.

 

[Makoeyes987]

If you randomly sample a multitude of Japanese media, specifically older teenager and young adult series of any type like Metal Gear, Silent Hill, YGO, Battle Angel, Rockman, Dragonball, Yu Yu Hakusho, Fate, Garo, Danganronpa, Biohazard, Street Fighter, etc etc..

Yes, a lot of Japanese media is 100% more interested in the abstract, emotional, and visual nature of storytelling, and they write their stories as they go along with those key aspects in mind. They follow their inspiration while sticking to nebulous themes they wish to convey in a visual, emotional sense. They're not structured like most Western works, especially today. Some people here severely underestimate the influence of Japanese anime and tokusatsu tropes towards visual storytelling and emotional expression, and how it inspires the aesthetic that's exhibited in Final Fantasy or S-E as a whole. And I guess they still get surprised by it.

These stories will never be constructed or structured from a top down perspective. They do not hold the same perspective like a Western media's scrutinization or pre-planning of a season in advance. They are not going to have multiple writers in a room from the SAG, planning a script/narrative blueprint far ahead of time, trying to figure out how they will construct and steer the ship of their story. They're just going to unfurl the sails and let it go.

That's how this works and has always worked. And Japan has been serializing and sequeling harder than before the West realized the lucrative profits that can be made off such projects (hello Disney!). That's been their bread and butter since Jump, Tokusatsu and more. It's why Jump series, tokusatsu series, and other Heisei era works have been immensely popular, successful and romanticized by these people who are writing our stories now. They're working with that in mind and grew up with it.

They 100% treat the medium loosely and creatively in an abstract and visual storytelling sense. They always will. It's narrative driven in the sense that they also convey their narrative visually and with certain abstract concepts and scene settings in mind. It's not a top-down organized affair. Why do you think the FFVII-FFX connection even was a thing? And honestly, FFVII has had far fewer wrinkles than most series I've been in. It blows my mind how people latch onto the mundane. Imagine a series that can't tell you what exactly happened in the first damn entry in it's franchise and it changed at least twice. Cause that's not unusual.

 

[KindOfBlue]

Kindofblue, I don't know what you're driving at here. Are you trying to establish some kind of objective position?
I get it that you're coming from the POV that everything is relative and there is no absolute good or bad. I disagree, but I'm not interested in arguing that point in the abstract. I'm not interested in getting anyone to agree with me, either. I'm expressing my own position.
The point I was trying to make was that you claimed that people coming at FFVII OG with a mature perspective would find many aspects of it absurd, even deal-breakers. I'm replying that I did indeed come to it with a mature perspective, having previously played precisely 2 video games - Mario Kart, and The Adventures of Kid Mystic. I did indeed find a lot of the OG delightfully silly, but didn't feel those elements detracted in any way from the fact that it's a profound masterpiece. Does it really matter if it's a masterpiece by accident or design?

I think it matters in terms of expectations, sure, because if I’ve convinced myself that something I like is a masterpiece by design, then I set myself up for disappointment when future installments don’t live up to it because the very conditions that created that masterpiece in the first place may have very well been a happy accident for all I know. So establishing objectivity in art is a tricky thing to do for this reason among many others because it’s not like we can quantify what’s good and what’s bad here, and cultural differences only amplify this further.

If you randomly sample a multitude of Japanese media, specifically older teenager and young adult series of any type like Metal Gear, Silent Hill, YGO, Battle Angel, Rockman, Dragonball, Yu Yu Hakusho, Fate, Garo, Danganronpa, Biohazard, Street Fighter, etc etc..

Yes, a lot of Japanese media is 100% more interested in the abstract, emotional, and visual nature of storytelling, and they write their stories as they go along with those key aspects in mind. They follow their inspiration while sticking to nebulous themes they wish to convey in a visual, emotional sense. They're not structured like most Western works, especially today. Some people here severely underestimate the influence of Japanese anime and tokusatsu tropes towards visual storytelling and emotional expression, and how it inspires the aesthetic that's exhibited in Final Fantasy or S-E as a whole. And I guess they still get surprised by it.

These stories will never be constructed or structured from a top down perspective. They do not hold the same perspective like a Western media's scrutinization or pre-planning of a season in advance. They are not going to have multiple writers in a room from the SAG, planning a script/narrative blueprint far ahead of time, trying to figure out how they will construct and steer the ship of their story. They're just going to unfurl the sails and let it go.

That's how this works and has always worked. And Japan has been serializing and sequeling harder than before the West realized the lucrative profits that can be made off such projects (hello Disney!). That's been their bread and butter since Jump, Tokusatsu and more. It's why Jump series, tokusatsu series, and other Heisei era works have been immensely popular, successful and romanticized by these people who are writing our stories now. They're working with that in mind and grew up with it.

They 100% treat the medium loosely and creatively in an abstract and visual storytelling sense. They always will. It's narrative driven in the sense that they also convey their narrative visually and with certain abstract concepts and scene settings in mind. It's not a top-down organized affair. Why do you think the FFVII-FFX connection even was a thing? And honestly, FFVII has had far fewer wrinkles than most series I've been in. It blows my mind how people latch onto the mundane. Imagine a series that can't tell you what exactly happened in the first damn entry in it's franchise and it changed at least twice. Cause that's not unusual.

I’m glad you mentioned Metal Gear because despite being one of my favorite game franchises, one of my least favorite things about it is how weird Kojima is about sexualizing women. Not that I have an issue with sexy ladies, not by a long shot, there’s just something...I dunno, weird about how he does it.

On one hand, Kojima’s just a pervert. Love the guy’s work, but he is straight up a pervert. On the other hand, a lot of anime/manga and Japanese video games are similarly guilty of this sort of thing so there’s a point where I feel I have to remind myself Japan is still culturally at a different place than where we are. Not that it makes it okay, but it does add context. Same thing with minority characters. Much as I’d love to see an Afro-Latino protagonist who looks like me in an anime, I wouldn’t really expect a Japanese company to pull it off well.

I guess what I’m getting at is it’s easy to underestimate how detached we are from Japanese culture even though it’s so popular in the West. So I’m always curious to know how Japanese fans respond to stuff like the Compilation, the story changes in Remake, BR in First Soldier, stuff like that. Are the kinds of complaints we see about this stuff as common among Japanese audiences as well?

 

[Roundhouse]

Ite:

Michael Bay?? Harsh!

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Mako's post is god-tier.

JP media will always care more about themes, emotional reactions, characterization and Rule of Cool/Awesome *first*. Exactly *why* all that works in the world of the story comes second.

There are very few JP works I can think of where the reason final climax is "won" is because someone managed to leverage the world-building information in the right direction. Instead, it's almost always because of someone embodying the main emotional thematic point of the series in question. This is why you end up with the Power of Friendship, the Power of Love, the Power of Family, and other such major themes being the "power source" that wins fights across JP media. How physically powerful (or intellegint) characters are doesn't matter as much compared to "have they figured out the emotional theme of this work and embodied it" does. How much they manage to embody it often is directly proportional to the odds of them winning a particular fight.

Final Fantasy VII is no different. The final fight is won not because Cloud and everyone else is physically stronger than Sephrioth, but because Cloud has finally accepted who he *really* is and can excise Sephrioth from his mind. For all of the world-building in Final Fantasy VII, it still comes down to Cloud dealing with his own sense of self-worth and accepting himself for who he is.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I guess what I’m getting at is it’s easy to underestimate how detached we are from Japanese culture even though it’s so popular in the West. So I’m always curious to know how Japanese fans respond to stuff like the Compilation, the story changes in Remake, BR in First Soldier, stuff like that. Are the kinds of complaints we see about this stuff as common among Japanese audiences as well?

They simply don't care

They expect changes because such revisits and retellings do it all the time. Remakes and retellings rarely get everything the same even when they try to, and they are used to expansive adaptive works, crossovers, and additional plot elements since that's kinda what a majority of their popular media are.

For instance, the biggest complaint about the Compilation and made its rounds through Japan, all the way up to its writers wasn't the fact "OMG GENESIS WAS THERE WITH SEPHIROTH WHEN HE WENT INSANE IN NIBELHEIM," it was the fact that Sephiroth jumped into the Mako Pit versus being thrown in by Cloud. That was the biggest gripe they had. Technology changing and expanding? Additional elite SOLDIERs hidden from view that are based on colors and ridiculously over-the-top? They eat that up.

Of course, I think there are certain core tenets that are sacred to Japanese fans. They're flexible but not completely. For instance FFX's ~Will~ audio drama that takes place 1 year after FFX-2 was extensively hated because they broke one of the key pillars of FFX, and that was Yuna and Tidus. Sin coming back wasn't a big deal, it was what they did between Tidus and Yuna's relationship that drew ire. In the end, these writers and audiences aren't so much sticklers for "canon" as they are sticklers for themes, moments and feelings. The visual nature of storytelling and emotional combination of elements and characters is what they prioritize.

 

[Ite]

You’re misremembering. The jump was Last Order, not Crisis Core. Also we were just as pissed about that in the west