Sonon Kusakabe background

X-SOLDIER

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
The Twilight Mexican said:
That's not even the point, though. Like you said, she's unlikely to be interacting with anyone outside Avalanche while wearing that, and they will either a) already know her or b) have been either introduced to her or briefed on who she is if coming from elsewhere.

No one who could benefit from the info actually needs it presented in that manner, so it's super silly.
Click to expand...

The key word there is "unlikely" because Avalanche operatives are all plain clothes, and unlike undercover cops they aren't all carrying badges.

When you have a bunch of plain clothes members all together in one location, most of whom are unlikely to carry any sort of official signification, and also don't know one another, one member with that official signifier establishes a command hierarchy. That's important explicitly because it's going to be a common circumstance where not everyone will know each other. The purpose of her having that is because it places her in a position to be able to scrutinize anyone that she is suspicious of, but unlike just some other low level member who doesn't happen to know who she is, her official signifier means that it doesn't allow them the same level of skepticism back towards her.

Even in street gangs, the leadership have some sort of visual indicator on themselves, even when the lower members don't. This makes it easy for the smaller set of upper members to identify each other, and also easily make a distinction when someone copies that attire who they don't recognize, and check that out quickly within their inner leadership structure. This helps them avoid outsiders using social engineering to get themselves access to supplies or information, and helps keep out people from trying to spy on what they're doing.

Then that system actually reverses when you get higher up in the leadership, because then you have a visually verifiable and known smaller group of people who know all the people who they have to know. Then for everyone above that, they often lack any official signifiers in order to make it harder for external observers to be able to identify who's in charge, or pick out embedded senior members from regular nobodies. That means that the uniformed individuals stay extra vigilant about social engineering, and it helps keep particular cells at whatever level of awareness is best for what they're being used for.

For her, all about the simplification of a passive hierarchy that allows her to operate from a senior position of authority, and also makes it easier to ensure that there aren't plain clothes outsiders just pretending to be important members from another cell that can fake their way in.




Also, she probably wears it all the time, because costume changes in videogames take lots of work compared to just putting on a jacket in real life. :awesomonster:


EDIT:

I just saw the character descriptions, I felt like it was worth mentioning that Yuffie's character bio describes her as a "Shinobi"《シノビ》with the word spelled out in katakana & in quotes, rather than just using the literal term for ninja/shinobi (忍者). That's an interesting bit of nuance, since during the victory scene in the trailer, Sonon says the equivalent of, "That's how ninjas do it." in both languages, so there's probably some nuance around Yuffie as a "ninja" potentially being something of a self-designated title rather than an official field of study that she received from a master, like how Tifa studied under Zangan & Sonon studied under Yuffie's father Godo. That helps to communicate the sort of tone where he's definitely not being patronizing towards her for it. Especially since Yuffie's ninja obsession was always supposed to be somewhat in defiance of her dad, I think that there's likely something being set up there.

Also, I've always found it interesting that in the original game, the only person who appears in ACTUAL ninja attire is the person that Don Corneo uses to kidnap her, so I'm wondering if the distinction in the katakana there is also so that they can use the real term later on. That might be why they use "Ninja" to refer to Yuffie in English despite how it's written, so that they can keep the term "Shinobi" for later in the more literal sense of trained assassins, since the term "Shinobi" carries more weight in English, and can still manage to carry that connection.

Lastly, this bit: "暴走しがちな先輩を優しくフォローする。" mentions that he gently follows his senpai who has a tendency to run away, which provides a fun bit of context to his introduction scene at the Avalanche cell.






X:neo:
 
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X-SOLDIER

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Gonna throw it out there that as a part of the research I've been doing, I did a shitton of mythology & historical research checking around the visual design references with Sonon the last couple days and well... that is a very likely possibility, especially with the way that they've set up specific thematic elements that they've already established and where this is happening in the story.



X :neo:
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
If Sonon does die in the DLC, as is pretty much expected, I can't help but see a humorous element to it.


*FF7R Part 1 is released and people who should die end up surviving*​

Yuffie: "Oh, I guess I have nothing to worry about then. My On the Way to a Smile episode was quite a doozy with its dark elements already, so it'll be a nice change of pace to not have death follow me around."​
​
Sonon: "Hello, I'm Sonon Target-On-My-Back Kusakabe."​
​
Yuffie: "......Am I a joke to you?"​
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
Place your bets, place your bets! Will he survive and remain Sonon Kusakabe or die and become So-long Ku-sacked-abe?

Almost surprised that I haven't found a video edit where Sonon's introduction is replaced with a generated voice line. :lol:

"Anyway it's nice to meet you. I'm Sir-Not-Appearing-In-Part-2"
"Anyway it's nice to meet you. I'm Experimental-Proto-Cid-for-Gameplay-Purposes"
"Anyway it's nice to meet you. I'm The-Love-Child-of-Zack-and-Biggs"
"Anyway it's nice to meet you. I'm Mister-Red-Shirt"
 
X-SOLDIER

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Since it's fun to make overly specific bets like this based on extremely limited contextual information, I'm gonna see how close I can get based on what I can pull specifically from his design elements, and then see how I fare once Intergrade actually releases.

After digging around at the more modern references that his character is pulling designs from, I think that there is a decent possibility that he might not end up dead, but that doesn't make the situation better.

Essentially his mythology is the source of a metaphor meaning that you're stuck in a position where you're unable to move forward or backwards. The more contemporary references used in the elements of his design point to very central iterations of themes that Final Fantasy VII uses a lot for things in relation to Vincent's story – which makes it look like his little sister might've been one of the Deepground candidates that got kidnapped while they were trying to get someone to do what Shelke does for the Tsviets.

So... it's likely that she's alive as a brainwashed commander in Deepground. Essentially I think it's gonna end up in a situation where he has to stop his sister from killing Yuffie, but he also can't let Yuffie fight back against her. He has to ensure that Yuffie escapes capture, while protecting both of them – and knows that his sister won't show any mercy to either of them.

Also, almost a guarantee that this particular confrontation takes place on a bridge and that he is so completely overwhelmed by the enemy forces so completely that he dies on his feet, and his body is left standing (since that's the source of the metaphor).





X :neo:
 
Obsidian Fire

Obsidian Fire

Ahk Morn!
AKA
The Engineer
I think Sonon will make it. And that *something* will happen in Deepground that causes Yuffie to need to leave Midgar for a while. But she'll need *someone* to stay in Midgar and keep an eye on things there. We do have a larger AVALANCHE cell around... and whatever happens with Deepground... I doubt it's going to be small.

The fact of the matter is... we need more NPCs that stick around, not more NPCs to kill off. The OG is really bad on that front outside the playable characters, Shinra personal and Bugenhagin. It would be like if FFXV had just Noctis and the Chocobros, but none of the reoccurring characters outsdie of them except the Nibleheim characters and Cor.

Games just aren't made that way anymore (with mostly throw-away side characters) and that's a good thing in my opinion. We need more reocuring characters who have reason to be outside Midgar. And so far.... Sonon is one of the very few characters who really fits that description. The slum NPCs we know have no reason to really leave the Slums (except maybe Leslie). So... FFVII has to start making more complex NPCs sometime for more than just being killed off later. Might as well start sooner rather than later.
 
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The Twilight Mexican

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
J0LPlDv.jpg
 
FFShinra

FFShinra

Sharp Shinra Shill
I initially figured him for immediate death, but I think the argument that he lives for further utility in Yuffie's storyline (Deepground was mentioned above, but I think he might be a sort of stand in representative of whatever faction in Wutai politics Yuffie is part of other than herself) is convincing me. The Wutai side of the ledger is clearly getting more development (as shown in Part 1 and now this DLC) so it makes sense that with that expansion we get more Wutai NPCs.
 
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