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You know, today I feel like ranting. So I'm gonna state right now what my rant is about:


The crossover Final Fantasy VII characters used in the Kingdom Hearts games.


Last night, I couldn't sleep. So, I started thinking about something--Crisis Core--because I'm halfway through my second time playing it. How does this realte to the topic? Simple.

Crisis Core > Zack > Cloud's friend who DIED > Cloud > Aerith's second love> Aerith > Aerith's death > Cloud and Aerith in Kingdom Hearts.

I was thinking about how SQUARE-ENIX incorporated some crossovers into KH. I never really cared...until now. And honestly...it pissed me off.

Don't get me wrong, I really don't mind that they added Cloud, Yuffie, Squall, Aerith, etc. into the game. I thought it would be okay at first, as long as some things in the storyline just didn't coincide with each other. i.e. Cloud and Aerith meeting. That's fine, right?

No. Apparently not, seeing as they DID meet. Twice.

I didn't understand why they put these characters into the game at first, either. Probably just because everyone loved them and they're pretty much what made S-E famous. Sure. But later on, I rather enjoyed Cloud being there. Not that he played a huge role in the first game, but really, he was just there because they had put Sephiroth in. You have to add the enemy of the enemy in somewhere, yes? Well, fine. That makes sense.

But at the beginning of KH, you meet Squall and Yuffie and...Aerith? What the hell? You'd think seeing FFVIII and FFVII characters in the same room would, alone, just blow your mind. But then they go and add Aerith into the picture. Being FFVII fans, wouldn't you be a little ticked off?

Unless you REALLY like Aerith, you should be. I mean, her death is pretty much what made the conflicts in Final Fantasy VII so impacting, right? But to just see her alive again in a whole other WORLD is devastating.

Alright, so you can get past the fact that Cloud and Aerith are in another game together. FINE. They ARE in different worlds, after all. Cloud being at the Olympus Coliseum, Aerith at Traverse Town. Cool.

But (for those who played the english adaptation of KH, like me) if you pay attention to the end credits at the end of Kingdom Hearts where they are playing minor cutscenes, you'll see something that was just NOT EVER meant to happen: Cloud and Aerith meet in the library at Hollow Bastion.

And that's where tensions begin to rise in my feelings for these Kingdom Hearts games.

Yes, I believe they have good storylines. Typical "light v.s. dark" -type thing. Whatever. But if there are gonna be other characters used...at the very least, couldn't they make THEIR story's make sense, too?

Now, in Kingdom Hearts II, I had already known that Cloud and Aerith would be back. That didn't really thrill me...but I didn't have a say in it, either.

When we first meet Cloud again, we see he's on his Advent Children clothes. Shouldn't THAT RIGHT THERE be enough to just throw someone off? But in that very same cutscene, Aerith shows up and confronts Cloud about something. CONFRONTS him. How is this even possible, let alone, acceptable to the FFVII fans that were inevitably gonna play this game? I'm not sure.

You know...it makes me stop and think now about another character they chose to pull from FFVII and toss into KHII....Tifa.

For some odd reason, Tifa spends the duration of the game looking for Cloud. They couldn't think of another reason to put her in? Apparently, though, she does help Sora fight against the Nobodies (preceeding the time when Cloud helps...somehow, she didn't notice his presence) and she works on that committee to reconstruct Hollow Bastion. Whoop-di-do.

Okay, so...now we have Tifa. Another question I have; if it wasn't a big enough deal that Cloud and Aerith had to meet, why didn't Tifa and Aerith meet? They were friends, too, weren't they? And they were working for the same causes in KH, too. But, I guess that would have been a bit extraneous. I mean...I'm already on a rant about Cloud and Aerith...I don't need ANOTHER topic.

Anyway, next subtopic of discussion; Tifa and Sephiroth. In Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth was notorious for being this badass murderer who almost destroyed the planet. When he and Cloud fight, Cloud can barely stand his ground. So my next question is, how is it that when Tifa suddenly interrupts Sora's fight with Sephiroth, she's able to avoid his attacks so easily? Sora, the keyblade master with the power of light at his fingertips, can't fend off a villain with an 8-foot long sword who's fended off easily by some girl in her 20's? REALLY? I think that's just ridiculous.

So, here comes the end of this rant. (was it too long, or not long enough?)

All-in-all, the Kingdom Hearts series was good, but what the makers did with the side characters who weren't meant to be there in the first place was awful.

But...that's just my opinion. I'd love to hear yours. :3

Thank you very much for your opinion. I'm happy to have read your response.

I see your point, as well. But it's true that Tifa and Cloud were childhood friends or whatever, but Tifa and Aerith (or Aeris, whichever you prefer) had to have interacted at SOME point. As Cloud, you go through pretty much the entire first disc with the option of having both Tifa and Aerith with you. You'd think they would have at least spoke to each other.

I think it would actually be a little more necessary for them to give FFVII a mini world of its own. You'd think that they'd think about the people like us fans who played SQUARE-ENIX's previous game...but I guess that's not the case, here.

The whole "turning characters into children" thing was kind of ridiculous to me. It threw me off the whole time. I mean, Yuna, Paine, and Rikku were fairies? No. That's just wrong. And Seifer...I couldn't look at him the same.

Exactly. It would have been kind of a thrill to see how the infamous trio would interact together again. But...of course, it never happened. Instead, everyone had pretty much their own separate storyline. It just got confusing. And wouldn't you think that since Aerith was DEAD and Cloud was right there when it happened, and the basis of his life is looking for her forgiveness, that Cloud would have a little more of a reaction to the fact that he's just able to even talk to her again?

I think I understand your point. But, you're absolutely free to "mumble," if you'd like to.

...I guess I never thought of that. But then again, Aerith and Cloud did still talk to each other in the second game as if they knew each other. And Cloud and Sephiroth still fought...and Tifa was looking for Cloud for so long. So...I mean....I don't know. It just doesn't sound right to me.

The fact that they were there never really bothered me. I had actually never played an FF until I played KH. However, I see your point that Square could have made more a nod to the fans of those famous FF games by making the storylines make sense. However, I think I heard someone with a theory for their fanfic once that had the KH world as a kind of alternate universe for the FF characters and they didn't remember anything from their other worlds. Or maybe it's a Full Metal Alchemist (anime) thing where there is an alternate reality where there are people who look exactly like the people from the other side... meh, like I said it never really bothered me, but I think you make a good point.

I saw the usage of FFVII and other final fantasy characters as something more of a fun usage of their characters such just adding some familiar faces to add a little fun, not like a bastardization as i get the feeling you think it is. I believe the adding of characters was to add depth along with backstory to the characters, so they wouldn't be two-dimensional.

Basically, Aeris was there to be the voice of reason or what ever, and Tifa was there to be all "light vs dark" and lecture-y, as was her role in Advent children. And you know they did meet. No offense met, but if you had beaten sephiroth or at least watched the cut scene you would see them meeting, it seems like they do know each other considering they don't introduce them selves (which it's always funny cuz every introduces themselves a million times in the game, everyone is always so polite) and the only reason they were friends in FFVII was that cloud brought aeris back to the group to protect because she was an ancient, so tifa and aeris were friends but only because cloud introduced them, not that their friendship was an independent event, you can't exactly just generalize it like that.

Just because cloud rocks hardcore at the end of the game in FFVII doesn't mean that any of the other characters were weak, they were as strong as you wanted to make them, Tifa is a strong character if her fight in advent children had anything to show us. And you see, she wasn't kicking a** in the fight against sephiroth but holding her own in not dying, and then cloud had to jump in. Sora can defend himself, he had to in order to get to that cut scene too by the way, your statement of how he can't fend him off is misleading. I see the only reason that sora stepped back and let cloud fight is that he realized it wasn't his fight to fight.

anyway, those were the things that I saw as misleading statements and my opinions about them, but then again I could be reading a little too much into it, i tend to be a crazy geek, so if you disagree, just call me crazy and we can agree on that.

I think that the point of throwing them into KH was that they didn't know each other at first. Assuming they tried to emphasize the point of Tifa and Cloud being friends by having her search for him. But I don't see the point in getting upset over Final Fantasy VII characters with those of FFVIII. I think it was kinda cool to see them gathered, but what pissed me off about it was that they gave the Disney characters more of a role in the game than they did the Final Fantasy.

I was heartbroken when Aeris died, so seeing her alive and well actually did me good. And it didn't ruin the storyline for VII. I just consider it a ressurection cheat that should have been in the other game. Same as in Tactics, except you don't do more than meet with her in there. In my opinion, they should have not only been the partners for the main character, they should have also had their own worlds in the game instead of that Hollow Bastion cop-out crap.

Well I think you need to remember that Kingdom Hearts is geared toward a slightly younger crowd than Final Fantasy. Hence the Disney characters. That explains Sephiroth being slightly less bad a** and a little more Tifa girlpower. And Aerith not being dead, and Cloud not grieving her loss. Also, it's a totally different world. Like someone earlier said, they pretty much started with a clean slate.

And as for Aerith and Cloud never being meant to meet again in FFVII, have you seen AC? They have at least four "spiritual" meetings. Then there is the last scene in the church, where it's practically like she's there in real life, even though she's dead. Plus there is the scene in the credits where he is obviously riding his bike to go see her. It's quite clear that the creators meant for them to meet again sometime, even if it wasn't in the flesh, or if they had to wait until the afterlife. So after this is isn't so farfetched that they could find each other in KH.

And as for people's stories not making sense...I think they left some things to be interpreted, or unclear, but none of it was unreasonable. Just because they never showed Tifa and Aerith meeting doesn't mean they didn't, but even so the storyline never calls for them having to. And it's fine that Tifa is looking for Cloud. She's trying to help him, somehow, because she's Tifa, and that's what the Tifa in FFVII does. She follows Cloud around and helps him. The creators maintained the integrity of that relationship to make it familiar to FF fans.

Personally, I had a lot of fun seeing all the other FF characters and how they fit into KH. And remember, the liberties that they took with the FF characters were more or less the same ones that they took with all of the Disney characters too. And no one is arguing about Chip and Dale being able to fly a spaceship...are they? Wouldn't that be a funny conversation...

It's true that they look very similar, however I think that's just because Tetsuya Nomura did the character design for him as well. They Knight in Kingdom Hearts' name is Terra.