Remaking Cetrans

[waw]

HIs powers do mimic a Cetra's powers quite a bit, don't they? He seems to be able to Planet Read, control/guide/manipulate the lifestream, etc.

I think part of this dependsd on how sentient the Planet (as well as Jenova for that matter) truly is. This goes forward with Destiny, etc. If these are just instinctual forces of nature, Sephiroth's mind could be quite powerful and actually imprint on the Planet....

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

At this point literally anything is possible.
Mickey Mouse could appear at any moment - or even two Mickeys, Cetra Mickey and Jenova Mickey....

 

[Sephiroth Crescent]

The question is if Serothiph () can talk back to the Planet.

At this point literally anything is possible.
Mickey Mouse could appear at any moment - or even two Mickeys, Cetra Mickey and Jenova Mickey....

Jenomick, Cetramick, and Mickmick. Why three? Only Nomura knows. See AC.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Isn't it equally probable that the Jenova treatments and mako poisoning only partly broke his mind, and his own psyche, struggling to survive, reconstructed a false persona out of his memories of Zack, whom it recognised as a stronger person than its original self.

I thought this was what @Makoeyes987 was saying? That Cloud's subconscious utilized the Jenova cells to do what you described, so as to facilitate Cloud's survival.

But now I'm unsure if that's what he was going for. At any rate, that's what I've always understood to be how it went.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

No, I'm saying Cloud's subconscious did it on its own, using its memories of Zack, as a way of resisting Jenova. The memories of Zack and the influence of Jenova were in opposition to each other.
I'm not claiming it's canon or anything, it's just my theory that I happen to like.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

No, I'm saying Cloud's subconscious did it on its own, using its memories of Zack, as a way of resisting Jenova. The memories of Zack and the influence of Jenova were in opposition to each other.
I'm not claiming it's canon or anything, it's just my theory that I happen to like.

Oh, okay. To me, taking the properties of the Jenova cells out of the equation seems to complicate the matter more than necessary given Cloud's eidetic recollection of dialogue and events he wasn't present for.

Apologies in advance but I'm gonna be that annoying pedantic guy to point out that they're referred to as Cetra, not Cetran/s
Cetran would imply they're from a place called Cetra but Cetra is not a place, it's a people.

Generally true, but Armenia(ns) are at least one notable real-world exception, being both a people and a place.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

The way I reckon it, he knows these things because Zack told him about them during their long journey back to Midgar after their breakout from the basement lab.

 

[JBedford]

I think the reveal that Cloud knows what he shouldn't know about Nibelheim because he was there is dampened if he could have known anyway from reading Zack's and Tifa's memories. I'd chalk up the verbatim recollection just due to storytelling reasons. If what we know about Jenova wasn't the case, I don't think we'd consider Zack's events matching perfectly with Cloud's telling as a plothole. It's common for when a character is explaining events they heard from second-hand, the flashback shown for viewers will have perfect accuracy except with deviations only when the second-hand story does not match the truth or for a misconception the teller has.

I think the memory stealing is canon, I just preferred my interpretation of events before I knew that.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

The only thing Cloud absolutely could not have been present for is the conversation between Zack and Sephiroth inside the reactor, before Sephiroth vanished into the basement library. IIRC, Seph was in the library for a week. In all that time, is it likely that Zack never once shared with Cloud his thoughts about why Sephiroth was acting so strangely, or the gist of the conversation they'd had while Cloud was outside the reactor with Tifa, or the fact that there were pods in the reactor containing humanoid monsters, and that's what had somehow causing the problem which had sent them to Nibelheim in the first place? If he and Cloud were friends at all, never mind best friends, they'd have talked about it.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

The irony there is that Zack's perfectly accurate recounting of what happened would almost certainly be down to his Jenova cells. He canonically formed his Limit Breaks by copying others' abilities.

 

[Sephiroth Crescent]

Let's talk Cetra (again):

You think they were friends with Nanaki's race?
Or something else, Cetra-related?

...



It was an interesting topic, after all... at least more interesting than the so many times discussed Jenova-Cloud-Zack (and memories) relationship.

This thread's been infected by Jenova, I get it now, but I can still hope it doesn't become a monster, right?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Friends, probably. There's no reason for them to be anything else.

 

[Odysseus]

Friends, probably. There's no reason for them to be anything else.

Not if Hojo has anything to say about it

 

[waw]

Let's talk Cetra (again):

You think they were friends with Nanaki's race?
Or something else, Cetra-related?

It's interesting to break down the Ancient Cetra, what we know about them, and where they were at. We see two different Cetra sites, the Meteor Temple and the Lost City. These are polar differences in some ways. This means we can assume the Cetra Nomads were capable of going over oceans. (Ships, in Leviathan and monsters, who knows).

We might also look at the architecture of both Meteor Temple and Lost City. Temple is more of a ziggurat, it takes stone mason work and some intricate magic (I assume) for the nature of the interior. Further, it's a big trap to house Black Materia.

The Lost City is really weird. We have two layers, don't we? The Shell City uptop that looks vaguely coral/ocean-like with some sort of more detailed/less natural construction furthern in and deeper down (where Aeirth summons Holy).

We also get the FF7R virtual program viewing the Cetra which may or may not be historically accurate.

How do we equate for such varied architecture, culture, and representations of the ancient Race? In some ways, I actually wonder if we deeply misunderstand the Cetra. Let's talk, briefly, about other FFs.

--Speculation--

FFI is a great example. Lufenians are seemingly human but different with tech and knowledge. You also have elves and Elfheim doing elf things. FFIV you get the Summoners a separate race that gets somewhat revisisted in FFIX with horned Summoners as a separate race. In a lot of these older FFs we have non-human races living side by side Humans in some form of a heyday of Magic. I assume the Ancient FF world looked similar:

I imagine Nibel Mts had dragoons running around. I could see a Burmecian like race hanging out on the Western Continent with the fires of Da Chao and worshipping Leviathan like Gizamaluke. We've got the Buga?/Nanaki Race running around in not-so few numbers capable of speech and exhisting as a bridge between civilization and nature. We know the Gi were around at some point. Very much like Native American bands, seem to be able to fly, have their own sort of dogs (possibly more cat like or straight up their own branch of Nanaki dudes), wore feathers similiar to Nanaki, and maybe had Necromancy.

Mako Reactors suck up energy. Kill plantlife, yeah? Midgar could be built on what was once a lush forest with a super tree like Cleyra or the one in FFV. Viera could have lived in that forest, or Moogle, and more.

At the end of the day I think the ancient FFVII world was far less human and involved a lot of near-human species. Maybe this is why you get folks with weird residual powers (limit breaks, etc) that they've inherited from long ago. Maybe there's some crossed bloodlines way back when. But I do think it was a vastly different landscape and fauna and flora situation.

This brings me back to your question: Cetra and the Nanaki dudes. I do absolutely think they'd have bonded and we'd see them traveling around. I think the Cosmo Canyon/Buga tribe and the Gi tribe were likely some of the last Cetra to stop being Nomads that were bonded with the Planet.

I think if we were to see an Ancients-Era FFVII, the Cetra heroine/hero should be paling around with a Nanaki-like "pet."

So I said above we might vastly misunderstand Cetra. If they weren't a biological race exactly, but a sort of.... class/tribe that moved around and planet speaked and handed this power down through their generations, the Cetra could be multi-racial in itself. It could be more akin to something like "Druid."

Yes, those born to a Cetra seem to be born with the powers of a Cetra. We don't know why this is, yet.

If Marlene is a Cetra or has Cetra powers, then it's either possible for someone to become a Cetra or her mom was one, we don't know which. Yet various official FF materials has called Aerith the last one, right? So is it even possible for anyone else to be born a Cetra without contradicting official canon?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

We don't know for a fact that Cetrans are born with their powers ready to go. The only baby Cetra we know of is Aerith and she spent the first seven years of her life with her mother. You know the old Jesuit saying, Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man. Aerith's mother probably spent a lot of time teaching her, training her in the old ways, trying to ensure they wouldn't be lost. That may be what the drawing on the walls of their cell in Shinra is about.

Ifalna was married to Gast; she must have known about the Jenova Project and Sephiroth, and she was a full-Cetra: she could probably foresee that the world would need Aerith.

 

[waw]

Oooh, that's a good point. If Aerith was only "trained" until she was 7, her powers may be incomplete as well. For some reason, knowng how quick Ifalna and Aerith are taken into custody, it doesn't always register that Ifalna could have trained her.

 

[Sephiroth Crescent]

Aerith's mother probably spent a lot of time teaching her, training her in the old ways, trying to ensure they wouldn't be lost. That may be what the drawing on the walls of their cell in Shinra is about.

Wasn't that just a reference to the short story released right before REMAKE? The drawings by Aerith, I mean.
And as far as I remember Aerith's power and 'sixth sense' come to her naturally, unknowingly. Doesn't it?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

No, the drawing is in the Remake. The big drawing on the wall.

 

[Clement Rage]

I would expect that there are many types of Cetra, maybe even rival tribes, with varying relationships (See: the purple things in the temple)
There's a perception that they're warm fuzzy hippies, but there could easily be some that are 'It's your time to return to the planet, and our job to make that happen' (draws sword)' We're looking at a culture of hundreds or thousands of years, it would be weird if it was all the same.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Wasn't that just a reference to the short story released right before REMAKE? The drawings by Aerith, I mean.

In the same way everything in "Advent Children" is just a reference to FFVII? Sure.

 

[waw]

No, the drawing is in the Remake. The big drawing on the wall.

I believe everyone is actually agreeing on this: the drawing's background is given in the shortstory. It's not that one is an "easter egg" for the other. The short story expands on that and it gives us some insights on Aerith's powers, but now how she got them.

 

[waw]

I wanted to discuss Diabolic Creation/Heretic Rayleigh in the Yuffie DLC of intergrade and I had thoughts that made me think of this thread.

In Remake, it's clear that Hojo got ahold of Ifalna's corpse after her death in the slums. He tells Aerith in Remake that she had "elegant DNA" and that they cataloged every hair and every cell to study her. It's also clear in the Remake materials that Ifalna was being experimented on (or hinted at it at least) while Aerith was a child. This leads me to conclude that Hojo was very interested in Ifalna's DNA and even harvested her corpse.

We've discussed in this thread if Cetrans are special on a cellular level. I hadn't taken this into deep enough account. Saying the DNA was "elegant" makes me believe that there really was something special about it - otherwise, Hojo wouldn't have been so exuberant about it.

*Yes, maybe he's doing psychological torture to Aerith.
**Yes, he doesn't say there was anything magical or special about the DNA. He says "elegant" in English. What is this in the japanese? Anyone know?

So what doest his have to do with the Diabolic Creation you fight in Yuffie's chapter in Remake, I believe just before

Spoiler

Nero

(Seriously, please get out of this thread if you want to avoid spoilers, I don't want to ruin it for you!!!)

I believe the Japanese name for this creature is Heretic Rayleigh, which recalls "Heretic Hojo" from OG FF7. Hojo injects himself with Jenova cells and morphs in Heretic Hojo, you kill him, and he morves into the Perfect/Ultimate/Extreme Lifeform Hojo (N?).

This is a bit curious. Other things with Jenova cells don't quite merge into Hojo's Heretic form. It's a unique form that Heretic Rayleigh seems to take on (something very close to it).

Heretic Hojo makes this seem like a cocoon-like stage before a final metamorphosis into a "Perfect" lifeform.

So here's my proposal that I hope the Ultimania confirms:

1. Hojo experiments on Professor Rayleigh from the Shinra Science Department/someone involved with SOLDIER/as seen in Before Crisis as a member of Hojo's staff.
2. Hojo is working on a cocktail of Jenova Cells to create the "perfect lifeform" - perhaps something that would or potentially could surpass Sephiroth. This is something he wants for his own body.
3. He would later consider Weiss as a suitable host, but this was after the Perfect Lifeform was destroyed.
4. Rayleigh was a test subject for this same cocktail he gives himself.
5. Ifalna's body was collected in 1996, Hojo originally could have have start experimenting on her in 1985 onward. He has her cells.
6. Sephiroth was originally thought of as a Cetran recreated.
7. Hojo should have a vested interest in seeing a Cetran-Jenova hybrid. That should be an incredible goal he's interested in.
8. There's probably a new project that's a mix between Jenova and Ifalna Cells that mirrors the Sephiroth Project running around.
(Sidenote: My vote is on "P" the psychic in the Crisis Core side missions. Longshot that'll never happen but how about Project Perfect, Project Pandemonium, Project Palamecia? Come oooooon )
9. The cocktail is a successful blend of Ifalna and Jenova Cells to create the Perfect Lifeform that isn't perfected when used on Rayleigh.

Rayleigh strikes me as Hojo's second Lucrecia. I think there's an incredible story potential there.

I think all of this will end up in fan-fic land and not get confirmed in Remake anywhere or emphasized, but I wonder if the creators have any of these thoughts. The ingredients are there.