Square Enix tried to teach us something in 1997.
Theyre still trying to teach us in 2024.
Spoilers for Final Fantasy VII [1997], Remake, and Rebirth.
Aerith will no longer talk, no longer laugh, cry, or get angry….
Cloud wrestles, in the moment she dies in his arms, with grief for the first time.
And Sephiroth does not give a shit.
Sephiroth is beyond human concerns.
He knows what Cloud is, and flies away with his gentle amusement.
Cloud is a puppet.
But this is the internal struggle that would define the next stretch of FF7.
Shes only mostly dead, right?
The only one who never buckles is Aerith.
Its never said outright, but the implication is seeded fairly often that she knows how she dies.
It becomes clear how many forces conspire against them, threatening to tear the entire party of heroes asunder.
Shinra is flying to the Temple of the Ancients, and Aerith wants you to try candy.
Sephiroth is waiting for his chance to murder everyone.
Aerith wants you to pick out jewelry.The multiverse that is Final Fantasy VII is threatening to collapse.
Aerith wants nothing more than for Cloud to look at her and hold her hand.
A reasonable question approached from the wrong angle.
The question, more often than not, is why the end of the world always feels inconsequential?
Despite some deft swordplay, Aerith is stabbed.
The materia falls down the stairs.
And again, many will weep.
As it turns out, this is, to borrow another multiverses parlance, acanon event.
Even given how much Remake and Rebirth stray from the path we all know, some things are inevitable.
Aerith dies in the Temple of Ancients every time.
But somethings different about Rebirth.
But the magic of it is this: you are encouraged to fight it anyway.
Humanity–being a thinking, feeling, emotional being–demands it.
When death comes–and it comes heavy in all these games–it has a face.
Life, on the other hand, has many.
And the sacrifice of confronting the end of all things means absolutely nothing without seeing those faces first.
Rebirths great power is that it gives us more of that.
And he lets her go to fight for the world she loved.
Cloud knows it’s not her.
And thus, Rebirth imparts its lesson.
One of the hardest but most crucial lessons of the year.
But Rebirth lets us remember, and revel in it, and finally accept.
There is an art to accepting the end is coming.
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