Hey Danseru-kun, very interesting. Thanks for doing this for peeps.
Thanks for asking about Aerith too <3
Could you/would you be willing to ask your friend about Aerith's Kiobito as well/and or who the Japanese think Cloud went on the Gold Saucer date/which they think is the most canon/most likely date (might tie in with why they think Aerith is more than a friend less than a lover)/what they think of the dates in general? ^-^ I'm honestly fine with this. Square Enix confirmed Cloud and Aerith as having a special bond and I always personally thought this meant more than just a friend i.e Aerith meant more to Cloud than some characters/just a regular friend (and I never thought Cloud and Aerith's were lovers/made love/had sex or sillies like that anyway in that sense anyway)
Honestly, I don't think the dates matter much to the plot. I think they matter to character development. That- plus a few other things, especially not giving a shit about which one happened- is why I 'fudge' to have them all happen.
Has there ever been anything that has given more detail into Tifa's creation? Like, at what stage of development was she brought in? I'm curious about whether she was created before or after they made the decision to kill Aerith.
I think I remember reading a quote about it on this site a few months ago, but I haven't been able to find it again.
'Tifa' was Created right around the same time as the decision that the person to be killed would be the woman. However, this is not exactly cut and dry, because after this decision was made, they took the archetype that had been earmarked for the 'Aerith' prototype, applied it to the 'Tifa' prototype, and gave the 'Aerith' prototype a new character archetype.
Update: As I was writing this she's online and she confirmed what surprisingly people had also denied. (I actually heard this from my friend that there are people who deny CidxShera. I still can't believe it but here.)
Anything else you wanna ask? (Note I won't bombard her with questions that's embarassing.)
Again, I won't consult the Aerith koibito line unless the other side agrees to my proposal.
Ask her if she thinks about the contemporary Political statement Kurosawa was making in Seven Samurai, and how well or badly this statement was made in The Magnificent Seven.
Oh, wait, RELEVANT questions?
In Que's defense, she's a sweetheart (koibito?
) who would never deliberately offend anyone or try to hurt their feelings.
And I can also tell you why she responded the way she did: she has put more effort than literally anyone in this fandom into consulting others on this stuff. She has asked numerous expert Westerners about this very phrase, and at least one native Japanese speaker for their input as well (I don't think they were familiar with FFVII, but, of course, the prevailing counterargument before Que asked them was that an "unbiased" native speaker -- i.e. someone unfamiliar with the game -- would be the most reliable person to go to).
And imagine the surprise when it turned out that every single native speaker turned out to be a secret Cloti mole without even knowing it!
Despite all her effort, she was shunned, ignored and ultimately betrayed by people she believed were her friends. And all because their petty egos can't stand to admit defeat on something that was always beyond their power to control.
And which means quite a lot more to them than it honestly should. I say that having been in the same argument for quite some time, so I know it might ring hollow, but it's unhealthy for a lot of those folks.
^
@ Tres and Quex
I'm not angry at Quex honestly, and I know all her efforts in the Japanese part of the debate. I've greatly appreciated her posts for the last one year here in TLS. I've used her posts as reference because they are all helpful. She's the one who proved that "engraved in his heart" is an idiom, not as dramatic as the English implies. I know that she's probably that only person in TLS who argues MWTTP is canon (at least at the time when I was lurking the threads) and I respect her for that. I've read all the threads in her forum too ^^,
I'm actually getting frustrated and annoyed on how people try to twist the Japanese language and this has just been going on for a week for me. I can only imagine how Quex feels doing this much longer.
So no hard feelings ok?
Think how Tres, Hito, and I feel. Especially Hitobito. He went from perfectly fluent to biased and untrustworthy in a matter of what, one translation?
---
As for the other camp that I'm sure reading the posts here right now. They can discuss it here if they still question what Risa wrote. But I won't debate in tumblr, I want to enjoy myself there. I know it frustrates them but they're welcome to debate on me one on one here if they want to. I can't just argue with them there when some of the arguments are:
1. What matches are not their feelings, it's both of them being alone
This is sad desperation and ultimately contrary to the point of the scene, since they're not alone. They have each other. So if them being alone matches, so does them not being alone because of each other. Also, it does specify romance, so nyeh.
2. Your friend said the kanji "omoi" can be used not only for love but depending on the context therefore the whole phrase is like that too
3. The quote says they talk about romance or the content of their conversation contained something romantic, it doesn't say they feel the same way for each other[/quote]
Context helps there. We do have 8 instances discussing that exact sequence, and 'each' and 'the other' feature in several of them.
4. I contradicted myself because giving a "sexual connotation" negates romance, this also contradicts the creator statement that they removed the risque-ness of the scene
A: What, sexual connotation negates romance? When the fuck since?
B: The creators never removed the risqueness of the scene. They even describe the line as being risque in the present tense. What they toned down was the blatant 'Yeah, they banged' nature of the original scene WHERE THEY WALKED OUT OF THE STABLES THE NEXT MORNING.
5. The sentence does not prove that the communication is two way because there is only one name written in there and how can you infer that it also refers to Cloud?
Re: Koibito line, you mean? Process of elimination/ simple deduction.. The same way we can determine who 'Man' and 'Woman' from Lifestream Black and White are.
I paraphrased them of course but these are what I get. Note that I actually supplied every quote needed and didn't rely on a single phrase. Also... they don't know a thing about Japanese.
Nope. Nor do their WacDonalds eating 'Japanese friends.'
I weep when they argue that simple phrase of "communicated feelings" which a Japanese confirms to be romantic, and only for a koibito apparently has another dozen meanings contradictory to what it obviously says.
It's denialism, plain and simple. Like Global Warming denialists or people who cry the moon landing was a hoax, they're rejecting the evidence on the desperate hope that they can change reality by not recognizing it.
Oh, and Que, thanks to a birdy, I know you're talking with them about the C/T stance about Cloud and Tifa's relationship over at Pink Hell.
For the record, Cloud shows every earmark of clinical depression. He does what he does in the movie not because he does not care, but because his thought processes are so out of whack that he probably does believe that if he cannot get absolution for his sins, that it would be better for everyone if he just went off and died and saved everyone the bother.
This doesn't mean Cloud doesn't care about Tifa. On the contrary, he gives all the shits about her and the kids. What he had stopped doing was thinking he belonged in their lives. He thought he was a burden. Yes, the C/T relationship has issues, but it's not due to any incompatibility between the two or lack of love or attraction of general friction between the two, but because of CLOUD AND TIFA'S OWN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCARS THAT THEY BOTH ARE SLOWLY BUT SURELY WORKING THROUGH, SCARS THAT WOULD STILL HAUNT CLOUD EVEN HE HAD GOTTEN WITH AERITH INSTEAD.
Yes, that was ALLCAPS, but Cloud's issues with depression and feeling like a permanent failure being THE issue is kind of the POINT of goddamn AC/C. ANY discussion of ANYTHING in the compilation surrounding it, including the romance subplot, must take that into account.
I feel kind of offended because I chat with my cousins (who are native Japanese) a lot and they sound like that. They know I can't read Kanji and hate reading in Japanese characters most of all. They try their best. 
