Saturday morning cartoons - Aerith Gainsborough

My first Final Fantasy game was Final Fantasy III (which is actually Final Fantasy VI) for the Super Nintendo. I loved the game immensely so I was excited when I finally got to play Final Fantasy VII. The first FF game for the Playstation, the graphics were leaps and bounds beyond what had been before. The battle scenes had a 3-D camera and the characters weren’t limited to little tiny sprites like the previous games.

Aerith Gainsborough first appears after Cloud, the protagonist of Final Fantasy VII, falls from a ledge after an explosion. He finds her in an abandoned church where there is a group of flowers that grows in the middle. They have a really sweet story that covers the first disk of the game and even leads up to an interesting love triangle between Cloud, Aerith and Tifa. But one of the most memorable things from Final Fantasy VII is that Aerith is killed at the end of the first disc. There’s no bringing her back and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Unlike other games where the deceased character vanishes away, Cloud has to lay Aerith to rest in a watery grave. It’s not uncommon to see posts online from people who cried when this happened. I personally finished Disc One and then didn’t start Disc Two until a while later. I loved the innocent, cherry flower girl and didn’t want the game to go on without her. She ends up still playing a huge role in the game as a motivation for the other characters and later helping Holy along when it’s cast to help heal the planet. Her and Final Fantasy VII’s popularity helped propel her into a cameo appearance in Final Fantasy Tactics where you buy a flower from her as part of the quest to acquire Cloud as a party member. She also guest-starred in the Kingdom Hearts and the Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy games where she helps the party. Her next huge role though is in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children which is the sequel to VII. She shows up as part of Cloud’s guilt and appears at the end to give him forgiveness allowing him to move on in his life. Part of what’s cool about that though is that they show her in the afterlife with Zach (another important Final Fantasy VII character whose story is really told in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII). Even though they are dead, they are finally reunited. Square-Enix has hinted at a VII remake at some point if they can figure out how to quickly and inexpensively update the graphics to HD. Remaking the opening of VII with modern day graphics just wet everyone’s appetites. So Aerith may return one day anyway and looking good when she does.

From Final Fantasy VII; Crisis Core: Final Fantasy; Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children; Final Fantasy Tactics; Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy; Kingdom Hearts; Kingdom Hearts 2