JENOVA's identity as a female organism...

[ForceStealer]

I've said before, I'm much more inclined to think that Sephiroth inherited Jenova's instincts without her actively and willfully imposing them upon him. I really like the way hian has elaborated on that, as well.

The Compilation makes the point of Sephiroth becoming Jenova more strongly than the original game. As Tres said, Sephiroth's plan is to BECOME the Planet and remake it, not just destroy it. But when that fails, THEN he becomes Jenova. He's going to strangle and kill the planet, then go crash it into a new one try his plan there. But again, I don't think it's Jenova telling him to do that. It's simply that their wants and instincts are inextricable.

And I'm not sure that those tainted with her can't return to the Lifestream. Sephiroth specifically says that the source of his corruption are from Geostigma's dead. People killed specifically by Geostigma, because the disease affects your emotional will. So they're like the Gi tribe who couldn't return to the Lifestream. Embittered/hopeless and so therefore can't diffuse. I don't think SOLDIERs who died before, or Sephiroth clones that he kills in the game didn't return to the Lifestream.

So it doesn't really make sense to me to think of such a potent being also stupidly existing on auto-pilot unless someone like Sephiroth uses her. Just doesn't settle with me at all.

She wasn't always like that. But the Cetra made it that way. The Cetra killed her, but were unable to destroy her resilient cells. If she still had an active will, the Weapons probably wouldn't have gone back to sleep.


On topic, as for her appearance, I never really considered that she was still sort of showing signs of the last person she had mimicked. And just took it the way Rishi did. I do kinda like the idea though. As long as people don't start thinking that's exactly what Cetra looked like.

 

[Ite]

As long as people don't start thinking that's exactly what Cetra looked like.

lookingatu Gast

 

[Clement Rage]

I think it's just 'villain that spawns little bits of itself' =children=maternal.

 

[ForceStealer]

As long as people don't start thinking that's exactly what Cetra looked like.

lookingatu Gast

Bravo, sir

 

[hleV]

Not much to go by, so it's anyone's guess really.

Supposedly Jenova was crashing into planets and doing her thing for a while, so the form we see her in can be a) her original, b) of someone she shapeshifted into, c) a mixture of both; d) whatever else.

 

[HylianMogget]

I always assumed it had something to do with its shapeshifting powers and how it could take the form of the Cetra.

Headless Jenova kind of reminds me of the Winged Victory of Samothrace sculpture, but whenever I actually compare the two, they don't actually look as similar as I expect, so it's probably just the no head no arms thing that caused me to associate the two. Devilman influence is much more likely, I think.

Whatever the influence/reasoning it's a pretty effective design, I think. The first time you see Jenova in the Shinra building is pretty freaky (or it was when I first played it when I was 13, but still; I certainly wasn't expecting Jenova to be some headless thing with an eyeball nipple). The whole Shinra building sequence is really great, in general, with its combination of mundane corporate office building details and horror.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

This thread has convinced me that the remake needs to feel like "Alien" fertilized an egg from "Blade Runner" that was then carried to term by John Carpenter's "The Thing."

This or just don't bother, Square.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

This thread has convinced me that the remake needs to feel like "Alien" fertilized an egg from "Blade Runner" that was then carried to term by John Carpenter's "The Thing."

This or just don't bother, Square.

Spoiler: So..... Mobius' Jenova Life seems to fit that exact description – to a T

X

 

[Remnant-of-VII]

JESUS H CHRIST, IT'S A XENOMORPH WITH TITS!

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Infuiry: Didn't we have higher quality video / image rips of some of the FFVII FMVs? Was the Jenova FMV one of them, such that all of the text on her forehead plate thing was legible?

Can anyone point me in their direction if so?




X

 

[Teioh]

Maybe Shademp's Toshiba DVD FMV analysis?

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Yup! That's got what I'm looking for, thanks!!




X

 

[Shademp]

There is also a download link to the DVD-version of nivljnv at the bottom of the review.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Thank youuu. Will probably use that for ripping some specific images for odd little things I've noticed staring at things for too long.




X

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Update: I'm pretty much finished writing the new "The Potential Of:" editorial that covers some of this. Hopefully you'll dig the little bits of insight and such. Even though the focus is largely on depictions of horror, I do hit some points about why she has the form she does.




X

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Page 3 of the thing that I wrote covers this in some small detail.
I'm very tl;dr lately.





X

 

[Arala]

I always thought Jenova's true form was the form we see at Nibelheim and the Shinra Building (although why she has an eye on her breast, I have no idea). And I thought that Ifalna calling Jenova a "he", as she does in my copy, was either a translation error, or Ifalna saw Jenova as one of her dead male relatives (If you remember, Ifalna said that Jenova came to them as their dead relatives, or something).

I could, however, be completely wrong.

As for why the creators decided to make Jenova look like a woman, well, women are usually thought of as creators of life, healers and helpers. Jenova is the opposite. And this makes Jenova more...scary. Maybe that's what the creators were going for when they created Jenova. A woman who acts nothing like you'd expect her to act. (Now I'm not saying that women have to act as givers of life, healers and helpers. I'm just saying that women are usually portrayed as those in stories, etc.)

My headcanon by the way, is that Jenova is related to Shiva, somehow. My reasoning: They're both blue.