For the last twenty years now, I’ve gathered there is a great wish, fervent desire even, to openly talk about Cloud and Tifa in the same breath as Cecil and Rosa, Locke and Celes, Squall and Rinoa, Zidane and Garnet, Tidus and Yuna etc.
From those who also love the Zack and Aerith romance, there is a hope that maybe they can be more broadly discussed within the same respectful manner as other Final Fantasy romances, without it derailing into how Aerith actually loved Cloud more, how Zack didn’t matter, how Tifa is an unimportant character etc.
As plainly and as heavily telegraphed as things have been in the retrilogy and more recent compilation entries, sadly, fandom and online discourse in both the wider Final Fantasy and FFVII fandom in particular has yet to accept or more fully come to grips with not only the story that is being told, but the story that’s been told from the beginning.
Because arguably, Cloud and Tifa now themselves have MORE romantic content, imagery, and symbolism, than all the other previously mentioned romances aside, especially in light of the retrilogy, and what Remake and Rebirth chose to both depict and expand upon as it concerns Cloud and Tifa’s connection, and burgeoning romance.
Aside from the Cecil and Rosa romantic arc (and arguably the more recent Vaan and Penelo, and Clive and Jill romances, loosely mind you) Cloud and Tifa are unique in the sense that they are the most thoroughly depicted childhood acquaintances/friends (YMMV) to lovers in the entirety of Final Fantasy.
And I’m sorry, sincerely, but for the very fact that for the first time in the entire existence and history of Cloud Strife, arguably Final Fantasy’s most iconic and recognisable hero and protagonist, from Final Fantasy to Kingdom Hearts, Dissidia to Smash, for his very first onscreen kiss, to be with Tifa, and not the typically seen sole heroine and solo love interest Aerith (oft associated more by fans than official sources with the likes of fellow “official” love interests like Rinoa, Garnet, and Yuna, if by mere coincidence they are all “sorceresses/white mages” etc.) is very telling.
It really shouldn’t be a controversial or fresh revelation, to either side now.
We’ve had Advent Children, which despite how often it is cited by those who feverishly claim Cloud only ever loved Aerith, and desires death over life to be with her, actually ends with Cloud choosing life, represented in both the home and business he shares with Tifa, and Denzel the boy they adopt and raise together along with Barret’s daughter Marlene.
We’ve had the debated canonical Maiden Who Travels The Planet, that arguable canonicity and character assassination as it pertains to Aerith’s treatment of Zack aside, still firmly establishes even from Aerith’s own perspective that Cloud and Tifa are meant to be together in life.
We’ve had Crisis Core that, despite otherwise cementing Aerith and Zack as far more concrete lovers than Benny Matsuyama’s Maiden novella would suggest, also goes more firmly into the territory of depicting the angst and love between Cloud and Tifa during the Nibelheim Incident, which as we know facilitates the entire plot of Final Fantasy VII even existing.
And far more recently we’ve had Kazushige Nojima himself pen two novellas, Traces of Two Pasts and Cloud’s own Two Thousand Gil to Become a Hero, that perfectly bookend each other in the respect that they both unambiguously and equally affirm and more clearly establish both the desire and love that Tifa and Cloud feel for the other, prior to all the romantically charged moments to come between them in Remake and Rebirth.
And as far as romance goes for Cloud and Aerith… it’s nearly always tethered by an inescapable air of both melancholy and tragedy. Which some choose to romanticise.
No problem in that. Tragic, unrequited or unfulfilled love stories are among the most adored, celebrated even, and I’d argue in essence this is what the Cloud and Aerith story slightly leans into.
The issue is that for so many context is simply ignored, deliberately abandoned even, all in the goal of seeing only what they want to see.
If you get Aerith’s HA Gold Saucer date with the desire to see it as romantic, that is what you will see. It is 100% framed and deliberately shot in such a way. So I don’t blame people for seeing it in that way.
But you also cannot ignore the melancholy. The inescapable tragedy of the fact that, as much as Aerith desires to meet the real Cloud, she cannot.
Even the oft cited and resourced Maiden novella reestablishes that it’s only Tifa who can find the real Cloud and ultimately bring him back.
Aerith cannot, even if she desperately wishes too.
Couple this with, her inability to move on from Zack, that and her love of experiencing new things and living her life with her new loved family of friends, and you have one of the most tragic characters in gaming. Her deep connection to and love for Cloud is a mirror cast on this. She is taken from us far too soon. She is conflicted, torn even, on where her emotions lie. Despite her seeming omnipotence in Remake, Rebirth firmly establishes that she has lost these memories of hers and the others future, so her journey in Rebirth is as much her enjoying in and loving life to the fullest as it is her trying to both figure out and reflect on her deep feelings for the two most important men in her life, two men where there is a lot of overlap to the point it would leave anyone confused and conflicted, especially a woman like Aerith who, has been deprived of so much in life, is relatively inexperienced, reluctant initially to heed the call of destiny, because she had found a new family in friends and loved ones whom she’d rather spend more time by their side than accept a fate where she may be forever removed from them.
This is the melancholy and tragedy as it pertains to Aerith’s character that is so often overlooked and ignored, all to focus on the more artificial and constructed romantic tragedy of the denied love story between her and Cloud, a love story that is tenuous at best, again, if you actively choose to more thoroughly explore the full context of both character and story.
Zack is no longer some conveniently forgettable NPC whose scenes are locked away in an optional and easily missable cutscene as they were in the original.
Aerith is no longer the insensitive and arguably more narrowly impulsive character as she was in the original (she never asks Cait Sith for hers and Cloud’s romantic fortune/horoscope, though I believe this scene is explored more thoroughly and in detail in the entirety of the Sector 5 dream date, a more in depth way of depicting their “compatibility”)
And you would have to ignore the plethora of build up and addition to the romantic angle of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship, no longer merely contained to the games but the films and novellas themselves, and something that has definitely been developed in a way that suggests the developers are cognisant of the emotional payoff that will come in Part 3 as it depicts scenes like the Northern Crater and Lifestream sequences which are heavy in Cloud and Tifa development and thematic symbolism.
