Hey!!!! I like a lot of your arguments....
I'll buy your dream connection thing...makes perfect sense...but Square didn't tell us this in their story. It came out of your imagination. But I like it. But still....Aeris still had to know that she was actually talking to Cloud, that Cloud would remember when he woke up....so there is still a little hole. I would then have to believe that Aeris, was the one that made the connection to Cloud...not Sephiroth. Actually, there seems to be two worlds in FF7 land. A reality, and a dream world. All Square had to do was leave a clue that this existed, but they don't. They just do it without explanation. They do a lot of things in this story, without any explanation. I just get the sense that it's unfinished, that they forgot or they intentually left things out.
Well, OK then, moving on.
So when Tifa meets Cloud, what do you think those flashes of light were....he also gets a flash in the beginning of the game. And then later a flash back of Tifa leaning over her dead father. (There are a lot of others, but what's a little wierd is that the last Jenova (Death?), fought Cloud with the same red flash).
Ponder this for a second....what if Jenova got some of her/Cloud's responses from Zack's memories. And then combined them with Tifa's memories of Cloud. Perhapse a clone is really a clone in this story. A copy of a person, without any memories of it's own....and the Jenova cells are able to take memories of other people, and make them her own. The video tapes in Icicle Town, said that Jenova would show them dead friends and stuff like that....maybe this ability is a part of that.
OK...now.....
Sephiroth is totally insane, after the Nib reactor incident. Why would he cut off Jenova's head? I still can't figure that one out. He was very Cold person, before that incident, according to Tifa's flashback.
I don't think the real Sephiroth is a so called, "clone" (and a missing #1 tattoo would prove this). The real Sephiroth was more, of a Hybrid. Half human and half Jenova DNA. Hojo injected his own unborn son with this DNA...apparently from conception, at least it seems that way from Vincent's flashback. The thing that Cloud was following was later revealed to be a clone....or maybe even the body of Jenova? (I think, that the Sephiroth that Cloud was originaly chasing, called Sephiroth it's master, and then you end up fighting Jenova death...I have to verify this though, been a long time, so don't hold me to it, just try to remember it.) Remember the blood trail at Shinra HQ? Remember how it vanished? and the story of Sephiroth killing the President taking the blood trail's place? Square went in a defined direction and then they confused it with the clones and the reunion.....It's like, they kept changing their theories of Jenova. It basicly just falls apart and makes no sense; at least it doesn't to me. (Anyway that is what I'm really hung up on, in FF7)
Lastly....
I still disagree with the destruction on mankind. Your forgetting about holy....
I hope you have the PC version....do me a favor and go to the movie directory on disk3...disk4 for the platinum version...and watch the End2.avi.
Meteor is on top of Midgar distroying the upper plate, Holy comes out of the Crater (Sephiroth was holding Holy back) Holy later goes in between Meteor and Midgar. Meteor is able to push itself through Holy. And Midgar start getting torn apart, because of the two forces battling, above it. But holy is still having an opposite effect over Meteor (that's what Red meant...he basicaly says forget what happens to Midgar...worry about the Planet.). Midgar is still going to be distroyed, but the planet is now the thing at stake. Forget Midgar....It's the planet we have to save. Then the Lifestream pours out of the ground. the music become relaxing when this happens. All the children open there windows to watch the lifestream. Then something magical happens when the lifesteam focuses over Midgar. The scene goes to white, then you see green bubbles slowly floating around, and the next image you see is Aeris.....and she's opening her eyes...and she's smiling. (I'm getting teary)
As if to say...everything is going to be alright. And the opening of the eyes is symbolism for "Rebirth". If mankind had died...her eyes would have been open and then she would have closed them, "Death".
Ok...where did the huge supply of lifestream come from? Well...this is going to be specualtion. Something that the Square should have explained to us, but didn't. So, here it comes from a fan, instead.
Planet was storing that energy up for sometime. Forgot how old the Ancients are (10,000 years?), but that's how long Planet has been storing the Lifestream. It was absorbing all that energy from the wound of the Crater, that Jenova created all those years ago. I guessing that the planet knew what was coming, and decided to store the Energy instead of allowing it to cure it's wound. Perhapse in doing this, Planet kept Jenova from waking up. The planet even told the Ancients to leave the area, when it started doing this, but they refused. (that's kinda in the video tapes in Icicle Village. Just, too many unanswered questions. At least with FF8 and FF9 you had answers.)
Don't get me wrong, I love FF7's overall story and it's one of the few games that can make me cry (if I'm in the right mood...heh...FF9 was the other one.)....I just don't like the holes in the Main Character's stories. I just feel that they could have done a better job in that department. That is why I put FF7 a hair under FF9...or maybe equal to it. If they had put more explanations of why stuff was happening, in the game. I would have put it miles ahead of anything I've ever watched on television, read, or played.
(So for me...FF7 does not blow FF9's story away...that's why I really, wrote all this. But, it had potential to do so.)
For a series that doesn't have sequels....they sure left room for one in FF7.
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And TiadaghtonDude...I believe I posted all that on the Eidos board at one time (almost word per word) then I went into my Tifa's brain scan theory.
The connections I really, can't grasp are: Sephiroth, Soldier, the Sephiroth Clones, and the Jenova Reunion.
Hojo creates Sephiroth from birth...but then makes Soldier by giving 12 year old kids, Mako Energy radiation, and then makes clones of Sephiroth after he dies (which look like charco men), with Mako energy and Jenova cells. Then he tells Cloud he made these so called "clones" for the Reunion. To see if they would follow the body of Jenova to Shinra HQ. That way he would know if Sephiroth would also follow the Jenova's body, too. (yeah that makes a lot of sense, wouldn't Sephiroth go to the Nibilium reactor, if that was true?)..but the Body itself left Shinra HQ, to go to Sephiroth. And Sephiroth used the clones for his own use (whatever that means). I guess it means that Sephiroth was always in that crystal, and the things that Cloud was chasing were the clones....but why the refrence to #1 tattoo Sephiroth?. It just starts to fall apart....We end up making excuses for Square's writers from here on out, when they should have told us themselves.
It's too complex!!!!!!!!!! It's like 20 different people were writing this thing, each refusing to give up their own idea of Sephiroth and Jenova.
[This message has been edited by Threesixty (edited June 09, 2001).]