Eh, it's pretty fair to not take romantic tones from the Tifa scene, especially in comparison to Aerith's scene. One explicitly has dialogue about romantic love and one doesn't. Tifa's scene reflecting romantic tones is something that could be supported by the romanticism attributed earlier in the game in regards to their overall relationship, but a hug is still not an explicit romantic action anyway. The fact that Nojima had to step in and green-light this expression of Cloud's character through that hug puts me in a position that the scene itself didn't have the initial goal of reflecting romanticism specifically. It was much more about Cloud's personality and that shared expression of grief with Tifa. Of course, that never stops anyone from feeling romantic undertones, but it doesn't seem to have been the objective. The same could be said for Aerith's scene despite romantic love literally being a part of their conversation—it just links to a bigger problem to face later on, the objective mainly spelling out Aerith's death/knowledge and Cloud's state of being.
On that note, I just...I'm a bit confused here. Am I the only one who is seeing the apparent misdirected intention in Aerith's "don't fall in love with me" dialogue in that scene? Aerith pointing out his feelings "not being real" seems to me an obvious red herring of some sort. We know that Cloud isn't himself and there's a bunch of circumstances dealing with this, but, has it not been established that he retained those experiences and memories even after the Lifestream sequence? I always thought this part of Cloud's story was to point out that the important bonds and memories he created in those moments overcame the falsification given due to Jenova and the Mako poisoning. If this isn't true, what does that say, then, about his relationship with everyone else in the group? Are those feelings of friendship and camaraderie not real, too? That can't be the point in all this.
I know FFVII ain't a hallmark channel movie, but good lord, I can't imagine they would seriously go forward with the meaning that everything he feels and experienced actually wasn't real and impacted him by the end of it. That simply isn't congruent to what is expressed after the fact or just, what FFVII invests its meaning in—this is in comparison to the OG + Compilation, but I assume the important themes and meanings there are intended to be held through the Remake, too. As far as I'm concerned, it just reinforces the fact that Cloud is going to feel whatever he does regardless of his state of mind. It's going to be real enough if he has the capacity to cherish those feelings and memories when moving forward.
