The Love Triangle of FFVII – An Analysis by Squall_of_SeeD

What’s important that we address before analyzing a Cloti or Clerith
perspective is that we address any points that may seem to indicate there is no canon couple to be determined. Such a comment has often been thought to exist based on a comment Tetsuya Nomura made in Dorigama magazine in response to a fan’s question, “How many girls has Sephiroth ever loved?”

“What kind of question is that? I’ve never thought about it. Honestly, I don’t care who loves whom. I think you could imagine the scenerios that we don’t mention however you want to. You could enjoy talking about that with friends. For example, I was frequently asked if there had been romantic relationship between Tifa and Cloud for two years, after FF7 ended, but I don’t have any clue.”

Given that this comment was made around the time of Advent Children’s release and after the publication of On the Way to a Smile: Case of Tifa, if Nomura had no clue even then whether there was a relationship between Cloud and Tifa — neither an affirmative, nor a negative — and, indeed, didn’t even care who loved who, that would seem to indicate that he also had no clue whether Cloud was in love with Tifa or Aerith.

In other words, that would seem to mean that there’s no pairing to be
determined as far as he’s concerned or even aware.

This statement, however, doesn’t preclude the other key developers of the Compilation of FFVII — such as Nojima, who made the comments cited at the beginning of this article — from having an opinion on it and an intention with the story.

As well, this comment from Nomura need not hold true for all time. I believe that a later comment from him negates this, as will be touched upon in the Cloti perspective about to be offered.

With that said, let us now begin addressing the Cloti perspective without the inclusion of the Nojima Statement. A note on this, however: While I do intend this analysis to offer the views of both sides, given that I believe a Cloti conclusion to be best indicated from the Compilation materials, I will, at times, provide refutation of Clerith viewpoints and counterarguments.

The first point I’ll bring up to support my position that it is with Tifa Cloud pursues a relationship is one of the most hotly debated aspects of the LTD: Did Cloud and Tifa make some kind of physical connection under the Highwind the night before they went into the Northern Crater?

I’m going to go with yes on this one. While I’m aware that there’s more than one version of this scene — one where Cloud’s affection for Tifa is high and he seems to reciprocate everything she says, and another where it’s low and he says very little — in either case, the scene ends with the two resting against each other as they sleep and reacting with embarrassment the next morning when they discover that some of their teammates saw or overheard them.

For Tifa’s part, she frantically asks if they were watching and collapses in embarrassment in the high affection version, while in the low affection version, she asks if they were listening and proceeds to tap her foot nervously. As for Cloud, he nervously scratches the back of his head in both cases.

Really, the only debatable aspect of this scene is how physical things got. In the high affection version, the scene features all the classic cinematic staples of an undepicted sex scene. Tifa’s line, “Words aren’t the only thing that tell people what you’re thinking,” followed by a pan to the sky and a fade-in to the two sleeping against each other is pretty straightforward.

On the other hand, the low affection scene still presents the two sharing a tender moment and embarrassment.

Certainly this scene alone isn’t enough to tell us that Cloud wants a romantic relationship with Tifa, but looked at in the wider context of the newer Compilation of FFVII materials, I believe it’s the first hint in that direction.

I would also argue that the canon version of that scene, as far as SE is concerned, is the high affection version. According to the Crisis Core Ultimania (pg. 33), on that night, in “the final stage of the story,” Cloud and Tifa “communicate their feelings to each other” (“Kuraudo to wa monogatari
no shuuban ni omoi wo tsuwase”) and thereafter, live together in Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus.

The FFVII Ultimania Omega makes the same claim on three separate occasions — once in Cloud’s profile (pg. 15), once in Tifa’s (pg. 27), and once in the Story Playback section of the book (pg. 198). In the latter, the phrase “disclose their feelings for each other” is used (“tagai no omoi wo uchi ake”).

In addition to both choices of phrasing frequently being used in Japanese much the same way as “realized their feelings for each other” is in English, a cursory study of the low affection version of the Highwind scene reveals that Cloud communicates pretty much nothing to Tifa in that version — thus, it wouldn’t fit the various descriptions of the scene. He definitely doesn’t communicate his feelings to her in the low affection telling, and certainly none that are about her. He just listens to her talk and then says they should get some sleep.

On the other hand, in the high affection version, he has quite a bit to say and is left trying to find the words to communicate “a lot of things I wanted to talk to you about” when Tifa suggests they employ a physical demonstration. Seen from the Clerith perspective, the feelings both shared were reaffirmation that though they couldn’t really be described as childhood friends after all, they are good friends now (Tifa: “No matter how close we are now… We were far apart before”).

However, if there’s any remaining doubt that it was a physical demonstration Tifa was suggesting by saying “Words aren’t the only thing that tell people what you’re thinking,” I refer you to pg. 9 of the FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimania. There, Kazushige Nojima refers to it as a “suggestive” or “risque” line (“kiwadoi” in Japanese):

Either word, of course, denotes something sexual, leaving what Tifa implied rather undebatable.

Further, Nojima and Kitase refer to the scene there as a “toned down” version of one in which Cloud would walk out of the chocobo stable on the Highwind, followed by Tifa a moment later, checking around her as she left — the implication being, of course, that they had sex in the chocobo stable. This sort of visual language is as much a classic indicator of an intimate moment shared off-screen as the pan and fade that made it into the final version of the game.

While this more “intense” version of the scene didn’t make it into the final game, what did was described as a toned-down version of that scene. That would suggest not so much that the ideas being portrayed were abandoned, but, rather, that their presentation was altered.

Of possibly greater significance to this matter than the CC Ultimania’s statement, however, is pg. 232 of the Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 2: Scenario, which summarizes the stories of each Final Fantasy. There, under a heading that reads “The time of the last two before the final battle with Sephiroth,” is the script of the high affection version of the scene, along with two screenshots — one of Tifa saying the risque line from the high affection version, and the other of Cloud and Tifa sleeping against each other:

The low affection version of the scene, meanwhile, isn’t spoken of at all — even while all four versions of the Gold Saucer date receive mention (pg. 225):

All this, then, makes how that scene played out rather undebatable as well.

Counterarguments that something physical actually occurred here exist, however. One such counterargument is an observation that the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 1: Character doesn’t identify Cloud and Tifa as a couple or having a mutal “likes” arrow on its character chart (pp. 190-191), while the charts of other games summarized in the book have such arrows drawn for their main characters:

By not identifying such a couple with regard to FFVII alone, however, the book isn’t making a statement that there isn’t one to be determined from the wider Compilation materials. The chart isn’t taking into account the entirety of the Compilation, nor even the entirety of the original game for that matter.

The line going from Cid to Shiera says “tsuraku ataru” — “to treat cruelly/unkindly.” And it’s rendered in the present ongoing tense, not past tense. That would be “atatta.” It’s not true that Cid treated her unkindly by the end of Disc 2, where the Highwind scene occurs, so there clearly is a point where these charts stopped keeping count of what was going on.

The chart also doesn’t mention that Cid and Shiera are married by the time of Dirge of Cerberus, so you can be sure it doesn’t take into account later parts of the Compilation.

In any case, Cloud and Tifa being intimate on that one night isn’t alone
enough to indicate that they had begun a romantic relationship by the end of the original game. There are a number of reasons for them to have had such a moment without it meaning this, and they were too focused on the battle ahead at that point to even weigh it in such a capacity. It’s only once the conflict has been settled that we see Cloud addressing how he wants to live afterward — and that comes only in the newer Compilation

A second counterargument related to the Highwind scene exists in the form of a line from the Final Fantasy VII: Kaitai Shinsho (pg. 189).
In a section describing the different scenes that can emerge as a result of Cloud’s affection rating is a paragraph related to the Highwind scene.

Here, a line says, “At this time, depending on Cloud’s affection rating for Tifa, the 2 events involving ‘dialogue exchanged between them from dusk to
dawn’ and ‘Tifa’s lines and reaction to learning that everyone may have seen (or heard) that situation’ will be different.”

The same line has been translated by Chibica of the Cloud x Aerith forums as, “At that moment, according to Tifa’s affectional rating for Cloud, the event of ‘dialogues exchanged between them from dusk to dawn’ and ‘Tifa’s reaction and lines when she found out that everyone might see (or hear) that circumstance’ will be different.”

From this, some have taken the meaning that Cloud and Tifa talked from dusk until dawn — the implication being that there was no sexual interaction between them. This, however, is a misreading of the line.

The line refers not to an instance of Cloud and Tifa talking from dusk until dawn, but, rather, to the dialogue they happen to exchange between dusk and dawn. At dusk, they have a conversation where the lines are affected by Cloud’s affection rating for Tifa. At dawn, the lines are again affected by the rating.

In addition, the line is speaking of the dialogue that occurs in both versions of the scene, not one or the other. We know from simply watching either the high affection or low affection versions of the scene that Cloud and Tifa do not talk from dusk until dawn in either.

In the low affection version, Cloud suggests the two go to sleep shortly after their conversation begins. And in both versions, Cloud awakens Tifa shortly before dawn, meaning there was no conversation between them throughout the entire night.

Even with the two having sex, one could argue that — this being the night before they journeyed to face Sephiroth — it was just two people in the throes of passion before they died. Not a declaration that they wanted a life with one another, but — on Cloud’s part anyway — a giving and taking of comfort offered before the end.

Fair enough.

That’s where the larger context of the newer Compilation materials comes into play. Speaking now to that wider context, the information in the CC Ultimania would seem to confirm that the affection Cloud and Tifa shared that night *was* an indication of wanting a life with one another rather than just a final moment of tenderness before death’s icy hand reached out to claim them.

For further indication of this, look at the comments Cloud makes to Tifa in On the Way to a Smile: Case of Tifa. Just days after the Highwind scene, Cloud tells Tifa that he thinks he’ll be able to start a new life because “I have you.” When she says that he’s always had her, he says “I mean from tomorrow on,” while smiling — the context clear that he means in a different way than before.

In fact, in the revised version of Case of Tifa, published at the time of Advent Children Complete’s release, Cloud’s line after Tifa says “You’ve always had me” actually *is* “What I mean is kind of different,” explicitly identifying that he means their relationship with one another has changed.

And what might be different now? What may have changed the dynamic of their relationship just days before? They expressed romantic feelings for one another and were intimate.

Here in Case of Tifa, Cloud was expressing that he wanted her with him not just as an ally in battle, but as a companion.

Not long after that initial comment, Cloud tells Tifa that he’ll be there to remind her how strong she is whenever she forgets, blushing as he says it.

The blushing points to that kind of nervousness one might expect from an awkward, bashful guy saying something romantic to his love interest. At the very least, the accompanying line shows that he planned to be with her indefinitely.