15 Years On, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Is A Lot Smarter Than I Remember - Kotaku

15 years ago today Square Enix released Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, a CGI-animated feature-length movie based on one of the most iconic role-playing games of all time.

A decade and a half before we actually got a Final Fantasy VII Remake (or at least the first part of one), Advent Children’s stunningly rendered CGI and gorgeous fight scenes gave fans some notion of what that might look like.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was part of Square’s Compilation of Final Fantasy VII project, which told multiple stories set in the FFVII canon and functioned as a direct sequel to the 1997 game.

I was too young to have played Final Fantasy VII when it came out, but I instantly recognized Sephiroth on the cover from the days of reading guidebooks to games I didn’t own and all the time I desperately tried (and eventually succeeded) at beating him as the optional boss in Kingdom Hearts.

The first time I watched Advent Children I only vaguely knew who the characters were and what the setting was.

There are plenty of beautifully rendered setpieces and exhilarating fights, but to sum up the movie’s first hour, it’s mostly Cloud brooding, villains soliloquizing, random children crying, and the Turks Reno and Rude doing a sort of anime Abbott and Costello routine.

I’ve watched this movie dozens of times over the last decade and a half, but up until this week, I would’ve told you that Advent Children is a stylish film with lots to show and not much to say.

Advent Children really works to eschew the common story idea that the day is saved after the villain is defeated.

The original Final Fantasy VII ends with a 500-year timeskip to a future when the planet and nature have healed from the destruction wrought by Sephiroth, Jenova, and the Shinra Company, but Advent Children makes it clear that healing and survival is not a passive action.

There is a lot of substantive symbolism to accompany Advent Children’s visual beauty, it’s just a lot harder to understand in a vacuum.

I don’t know that my perspective of the movie would have shifted so greatly if I hadn’t recently played through the Final Fantasy VII Remake and watched a six-hour analysis series covering the original game.

(From what I gather, he wanted to use ghosts to turn the planet into his own personal spaceship, or something.) But Advent Children, like the rest of the franchise, is able to convey sincere emotion while also remaining steadfastly on its bullshit?

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is available to stream on Crackle and can be rented on Amazon Prime, YouTube, and Google Play.

I get for some people that’s the very reason why people like Final Fantasy: it’s an anime as fuck.

But I think Yakuza gets away with it because it’s able to ground the various emotions in a way that Final Fantasy hasn’t been able to.