In control: Jenova or Sephiroth

[ero85]

Couldnt find a thread about this ( perhaps bad searching skills ), always interested about the question of who was controlling who in the end.

I want to show you guys my take on it, and i would like to know your opinions. My theory:

Jenova was an alien life form/cells, that influences it's host to destroy all life form and absorb all the energy of a planet. It doesn't think, it just does. It wants to destroy, and it wants energy.

When i refer to Jenova, it could also mean the so manieth host with Jenova cells.

The planet where Jenova was before coming to Gaia on a meteor, had no more life and all the energy was absorbed, destroying the planet and forcing Jenova to move on. The planet was all drained out and Jenova knew he/she/it had to move on to another planet to survive.

Probably similar to a black materia, Jenova summoned meteor and somehow got onto the meteor to move on to a planet with life. How could Jenova get onto a meteor? He/she/it had amazing power and strength after absorbing the planets life so that made the host possible to perform this action.

Now back to who was in control, Sephiroth chose to be evil, it is his own will and that's his own personality. But his thoughts are influenced by the Jenova cells, that has only 1 purpose, destroy life and absorbing energy to become the one and truly powerfull life form of a planet. Sephiroth would have been a different man without the Jenova cells.

But isn't Jenova then in control of sephiroth? No, like i said before we shouldn't see Jenova as a thinking life form/cells. It doesn't think, it just does. It gives Sephiroth the instinct to become a god, to kill all life and absorb the planets energy. Like cancer cells taking over the normal cells, it just does. Jenova works similar who wants to perform these evil actions. It's like the instinct we humans have when we need to survive, we just do what we need to do without thought.

So Jenova isn't giving orders. It isn't in control, it influenced Sephiroth and changed his needs. Like we have needs to eat and drink and have kids someday etc. He needed to become a "God".

When you see Jenova's body in nibelheim, thats the last host of Jenova who was captured by the cetra. Happened to be a woman. She got Jenova cells somehow. The part of Jenova you see in shinra hq is a part of the original host who came with the meteor 2000 years ago, who absorbed the planets energy before coming to Gaia. All that energy mutated it's body and gave the host incredible powers, including shape shifting. So Sephiroth used that first host who came to Gaia, making it shape shift into himself and to get the black materia to the northern crater to his real body.

The event in nibelheim, where Sephiroth learns about Jenova, he doesn't know how to handle his anger, in his anger he triggered what was in his body all the time, the true purpose of the Jenova cells, death and power in the form of absorbing planets energy.

Because Sephiroth is in control, but he is influenced by the Jenova cells, makes me see Sephiroth as an evil villain and victim both at the same time.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Your interpretation is more or less in line with my own.

I will be interested to see what Mr Ite has to say.

 

[Kionae]

I never really considered Jenova to be in control of Sephiroth... but I also never really thought he/she/it was as big an influence over him as a lot of people think. I think all Jenova really did was plant the seed in his mind, and then assist because Sephiroth's goals matched his/her/its own.

I think a *huge* part of Sephiroth's motivation for coming to the conclusion that the planet should be destroyed and he should ascend to "godhood" was his discovery that he was basically a genetic experiment and not even fully human. It wasn't so much a need to become a god as it was acting on the psychological pain he felt and lashing out at those he deemed responsible for it (basically, all humans, who he blamed for the extinction of the Cetra, which is what he believed he was, in part... ironically, he was responsible for their extinction himself when he killed Aerith).

 

[ero85]

I never really considered Jenova to be in control of Sephiroth... but I also never really thought he/she/it was as big an influence over him as a lot of people think. I think all Jenova really did was plant the seed in his mind, and then assist because Sephiroth's goals matched his/her/its own.

I think a *huge* part of Sephiroth's motivation for coming to the conclusion that the planet should be destroyed and he should ascend to "godhood" was his discovery that he was basically a genetic experiment and not even fully human. It wasn't so much a need to become a god as it was acting on the psychological pain he felt and lashing out at those he deemed responsible for it (basically, all humans, who he blamed for the extinction of the Cetra, which is what he believed he was, in part... ironically, he was responsible for their extinction himself when he killed Aerith).

Yeah it would make sense his hatred towards humans after the discovering at Nibelheim. But when i look at his character, Sephiroth is a intelligent person. Oke you realize that you were a experiment and you were decieved, you go slaughter a whole village in reaction? And you want to destroy every human because mother was a Cetra? Above all, why would you want to drain all the life stream and scar or destroy planet? The planet of the cetra of who he thinks he was. Sephiroth isnt such a simple character.

I find that jump too big and unlogical.

 

[ero85]

Cant edit posts?

Anyway, for me that shows the influence of Jenova cells in his body being triggered, influencing his behaviour and wanting to slaughter everyone.

 

[Flare]

^I think you can edit posts after you post 10 times?

I always thought Sephiroth was the one in control, but that when he started going insane, Jenova influenced him as well. I always felt that Jenova does have intelligence, but Sephiroth's will was too strong for Jenova to take over, thus Sephiroth kept control of himself and used Jenova's powers in his own way.

Going by the original game, the brief scenes with Sephiuroth before he goes crazy shows a rather cold, somewhat uncaring, serious, and distant individual, and I always thought it weird how he snapped without warning at the Mako reactor, like he comes to an assumption and goes all paranoid and almost crazy, reads some info (not everything, but just some) and again comes to the assumption that he's a Cetra, Jenova's a Cetra, and then goes completely crazy and out of control.
I thought it was a bit weird that it happened so fast.

Then you have Crisis Core, where Sephiroth's not this cold, uncaring person, he actually does care about people, he has two best friends, he smiles and laughs and jokes with them, and though he is serious and can seem cold to outsiders, inwardly he's human as well, just like everyone else. He loses one of his best friends and the other betrays him. I like the Nibelheim scene in CC better because of this. Sephiroth does get that sudden, awful idea about "what if I was created like this?", and then he seems to snap out of it when Genesis shows up. However, what Genesis tells him shakes him up again, and he gets pushed over the edge by that stuff. Then he gets unresponsive, and leaves to fi8nd out on his own of that stuff's true. The rest of it goes like in the original game, but I thought it much more realistic that Sephiroth gets pushed over the edge by someone that he once was very close to.

Going by Crisis Core, it really seems like he's definitely in control more than ever, just that he wasn't mentally strong enough to keep a hold on his sanity, loses it, and ends up getting killed. When he comes back, I think by that point his mind and body have merged more with Jenova's, and he gains much more power. He takes over Jenova's abilities, yet also gets influenced by it, hence his quotes from AC.

Well geez, that was long-winded.

 

[jazzflower92]

I like to think Jenova and Sephiroth are in a symbiotic relationship. I also like to subscribe to the theory that Jenova is a corrupted goddess from another planet.

 

[Starling]

Here's how I see it. Sephiroth burning down Nibelheim may or may not have involved Jenova's instinct, as at that point he felt that humans betrayed the Cetra, which he thought he was based on what he found in the mansion. Once he ended up in the lifestream, he got his facts straight and essentially became the same entity as Jenova, reconstructing his body with Jenova cells. At that point, he knowingly embraced Jenova's instincts and desires, revising his plan to be in line with it, now wanting to destroy the whole world and absorb all of the planet's energy instead of just going around killing all the humans.

Since Jenova's been braindead since the Cetra sealed it, the cells just operate on instinct. Sephiroth is essentially the mind tied to the main body, which means he can influence pretty much any Jenova cells as long as they aren't part of someone whose mind can resist him. I figure only people who were infused with Jenova cells before they were born can control other people with Jenova cells, as only Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal have shown any capacity for it. Genesis and Angeal only seem to be able to control their copies, which contain a particular strain of Jenova cells derived from their bodies. This might indicate that Sephiroth wouldn't be able to influence that strain of Jenova cells, or at least not as well as he can the ones more directly related to him.

As for how he found burning down and killing an entire hometown to be a reasonable reaction to his discovery, I figured it was slowly building up to that over a long period of time, with all the betrayal he felt towards what was going on in his life. Based on CC, his 2 best and apparently only friends besides Zack basically left him behind without so much as asking for his help. He tried to bring them back so he wouldn't have to kill them but Angeal ended up dying anyway and Genesis gave every indication he didn't care about their friendship anymore. He was so disillusioned with everything that was going on that he was seriously considering leaving Shinra after the mission, even though he probably didn't know anything beyond a life with Shinra. It also seems that he spent a whole week reading the books in the mansion without eating or sleeping, if the door really did stay shut with the light on for that entire time. That's the recipe for quite a psychotic break.

I also want to clarify that what Sephiroth says in ACC suggests that the meteor Jenova arrived on was the remains of the previous planet it visited, rather than summoning Meteor. However, since materia is described as crystallized knowledge and memories, the black materia could've formed from the memories of the meteor that Jenova crashed into the planet with.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I don't really understand much about Jenova except that it's some kind of parasite or virus that feeds off its victims. Exactly what it "eats", I don't know - I mean, does it feed off matter and convert that to energy, or feed directly off energy? I also don't know much about biology, but as I understand it, any parasitical organism that kills its host before it can transfer to another host is a bit of a failure, evolutionarily speaking.

Where I'm going with this is that I don't see the need to differentiate between Jenova and Sephiroth. It's not that one dominates the other. The two have merged. I think that's what Jenova does. It's a virus that infects people and operates entirely on instinct, having evolved over the millennia to have that effect on its victim's cell structures and brainwaves. It doesn't necessarily have any conscious will of its own, just the compulsion of instinct. Most of the people it infects become mindless hosts, but occasionally it encounters someone with the strength to retain their identity while fusing with the instinctive urge of the virus to colonize and dominate. These individuals, the "typhoid Marys" of Jenova, are useful in enabling the virus to extend its lifespan and spread across the galaxy.

I don't know why SOLDIER can withstand the effect of being infected with Jenova cells. Maybe the cells are killed first, like some vaccines? Maybe it's the effect of the mako? That would kind of make sense, since the Lifestream is the lifeblood of the planet and Jenova is an alien organism that has infected the planet's "body".

 

[Roger]

As far as I'm concerned, Jenova quite conciously targeted and broke Sephiroth's mind in Nibelheim, but Sephiroth got back into the pilot seat ever since he turned evil. Suffice to say cutting off Jenova's head was already Sephiroth's complete own initiative.

 

[Kionae]

I don't know why SOLDIER can withstand the effect of being infected with Jenova cells. Maybe the cells are killed first, like some vaccines? Maybe it's the effect of the mako? That would kind of make sense, since the Lifestream is the lifeblood of the planet and Jenova is an alien organism that has infected the planet's "body".

I was always under the impression that normal members of SOLDIER only underwent some sort of mako infusion... not exposure to Jenova cells. Cloud and Zack were an exception, being that they was taken captive at Nibelheim, and further experiments conducted on them.

 

[Clement Rage]

I think it's deliberately ambiguous because it works better that way.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I was always under the impression that normal members of SOLDIER only underwent some sort of mako infusion... not exposure to Jenova cells. Cloud and Zack were an exception, being that they was taken captive at Nibelheim, and further experiments conducted on them.

On the Highwind, when he's explaining how he was only under an illusion that he'd been a SOLDIER, Cloud tells Barret, "You see, someone in SOLDIER isn't simply exposed to Mako energy. Their bodies are actually injected with Jenova cells......"

 

[Wolf_]

While I don't agree, I believe it has been confirmed that it's all sephiroth. it's never sat well with me though. For one it is more than a virus, it's like the embodiment of evolution. Highly intelligent being but with a simple goal/ motivation to survive. If it has the ability to shape shift and talk then it's far beyond a disease. When Jenova was stopped by the cetra, it must only have been put in a coma like state or it's cells would have died and became useless; meaning it was still alive. Also being able to shapeshift as well as being cut into pieces and reform would suggest that each cell has its own "brain" if you will. Now when you inject such a cell into a life form that doesn't have a consciousness (I'm assuming it was extremely early in pregnancy) it seems plausible that an entity that's sole function is to destroy everything and survive would see this as a way out and mould the child's body into something powerful and sit back in the back off his mind and wait. When sephiroth realises just what has happened to him, Jenova is there to "whisper in his ear" and guide him to do her bidding. Despite his anger, it seems convenient that he wants to destroy the world and bugger off. Also I always thought Jenova's only line in the game says "because you are a puppet" perhaps she was actually taking to sephiroth.

 

[Starling]

The thing about comas is that a lot of people never wake up from them. There comes a point where a comatose individual is clinically dead/brain dead. The body is still alive of course but the mind is never coming back. If you look at multicellular organisms, you have the consciousness of the individual and then you have all the cells that make them up doing whatever they're made to do, independent of that mind. Because of this, some aspects of the body operate involuntarily. When applied to Jenova, the main body's mind was presumably lost due to what the Cetra did to seal it away. I can't really see how else the body would've just stayed in the reactor for all those years, especially since Sephiroth got it to shapeshift into him and slaughter its way out of Shinra HQ. By that point it doesn't even have its head anymore.

Due to Jenova's ability to separate and piece itself back together, it likely used some kind of telepathic network to direct its individual cells and infected individuals. It seems that Jenova's parasitic tendencies are more on a planetary scale, as the cells seem perfectly capable of being symbiotic or at the very least non-malicious towards individuals unless consciously directed to be by someone. Going by that, the cells' base instinct without any other direction or factors is likely to simply integrate themselves into individuals as much as they can. They don't seem to cause any trouble unless Sephiroth gets involved.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I guess it all depends on whether "Jenova" has a conscious will or not.

That said, to the best of my knowledge Jenova is (like human beings) something of an evolutionary failure, as she/it ultimately destroys the very organism/planet on which her life depends. The best examples of evolution are surely those organisms that can flourish in their environment without destroying it. Now, the universe is large, so it will be a long time before Jenova destroys everything, but ultimately she's an evolutionary dead end.

Pathogens with very high mortality often evolve into less "killer" versions of themselves because it's to their own advantage to keep their host alive. Lex will correct me if I'm wrong, but some examples of this evolution are cholera, the bubonic plague, and even, I think, HIV.

 

[Wolf_]

It would be helpful if we got more of a back story of Jenova. Was she from a planet full of 'Jenovas' or is it a single, god like being. If her goal is to absorb the planet's energy then perhaps with each planet she destroyed she would become more powerful until she literally was God. Also, just to continue with my theory a little more.. Assuming she was in control or at least a conscious voice in the back of Sephiroth's mind, wouldn't it make sense that when they were thrown in the reactor and learned the wisdom of the lifestream it would make sense to wait in the crater and have the now redundant body of Jenova collect the black materia and bring it to him/them. But Cloud got it first, hence the calling him to the crater instead.

Have you ever looked at the wiki page for Jenova at the Etymology and Symbolism section and the religions symbolism of it all? I love reading stuff like that and it gives a different perspective on things, while making a hell of a lot of sense. Especially the last chapter.

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Jenova#Etymology_and_Symbolism

 

[Starling]

I once found an interpretation where planets and whatever Jenova is are the two types of entities that exist and travel through space, with one thriving on its own and the other feeding off the first, with Jenova's kind procreating by separating sufficiently large pieces that remain separated long enough to become independent. It was pretty interesting. I think it's from a fanfic I read a long while back but it'd take me too long to find it again.

You'd think if Jenova was in control, its head would've been content feeding off the lifestream it was dunked in when Sephiroth died the first time around, rather than make Sephiroth set off the plot. There probably wasn't any need to destroy the planet so swiftly, considering Weapon only woke up when Meteor was summoned.

 

[Wolf_]

logically yes but that wouldn't have made a good story connection with the hero. The cells could have favored Sephiroth as it's new body as it was more functional at the time. Also, what do you think of the organs in the tank with her? I don't believe they're part of her but rather Shinra's crude attempt at reviving/maintaining her cells.

On an unrelated note.. if what happens in DOC is correct, when the planet is in great danger, all life literally just fecks off to another via Omega. What if at the end of ff7 the lifestream was bursting out of the ground to find another planet and holy prevented it from leaving, so it was forced to destroy the meteor itself. Aeris' white materia could have been a 'get back in your box' spell for the lifestream to prevent it from leaving... Okay i need to go to bed.. The lack of sleep is messing with my mind. And the jack daniels and honey certainly isn't helping either..

 

[Flare]

I always thought the organs in the tank with her are a part of her; the reason they're just floating around, well, she isn't human. Then though, there's her human-like appearance, as far as her head goes. Why does she look that way? Is it her true form, or is it the last form she took before the Cetra sealed her away? Maybe her face is a copy of a long-dead Cetra that she tried to impersonate?
Since Jenova's so powerful, I always just assumed either she's a single being with no others to her race, or that there are very few of them. Imagine if the universe was full of them, that would be horrific.

Jenova's always been kind of an interesting subject for me. You get some info on her, but not enough to know what she is exactly. Leaves some room for interpretation, and some great conversations, like this.

 

[Starling]

Apparently Jenova Synthesis is the closest to her true form, not the way she is in the tank. With that said, we never actually see Jenova's true form and it should stay that way. With the size of the universe, it's unlikely Jenova is the only one of its kind, though the nature of its existence means there can't be that many.

 

[Ite]

Sephiroth is in control. That's canon.

 

[Wolf_]

He is indeed. I just wish he wasn't. After playing crisis core i actually feel sorry for him, like he's the real victim in all of this.

 

[hleV]

There could be arguments made for both sides, however it seems that the narrative of the story would like to suggest it was Sephiroth.

Personally I have Jenova permanently braindead, while Sephiroth is being driven by the information he has rather than actual influence from Jenova. Sephiroth considers himself a child of Jenova due to having its superior DNR mixed with human DNR, so it's not that weird that he would choose to follow Jenova's "path". In fact, I'm not even sure if wishing to become a godlike being is something Jenova wants, as it's described like a virus.

 

[ero85]

Reading interesting stuff here. I just wonder, isnt it a too big of coincidence that the first few injected with Jenova cells after discovering Jenova, one of them comes out wanting to kill all humans and aborbing all the planets energy? For me this kinda says that the cells do influence its host. I feel like if the Jenova cells didnt have influence, just contributes to strength, we would have had generations of people before someone would come up with pyscho idea Sephiroth had. Sephiroth just snapped as first under the influence of wanting to kill and enjoying the green flow.

I think without the Jenova Cells, Sephiroth would have wanted to pay Hojo a visit after the discovery at Nibelheim, instead of deciding up in one night to become a "god". This based on his character.

I hope we get to learn more about Jenova in the remake. Doesnt need imaging of Jenova on previous planets, ariving on Gaia or whatsoever. More subtle hints throughout the game, maybe a more detailed scene of Ifalna and professor Gast talking about Jenova.

Then again, the power of this game also lies in the fact many things are left to our interpretation.