I noticed that part in my play through too, but personally I think the edited version makes more sense.
When I play the original game I thought that the “breeding” suggestion from Hojo was just a dirty joke that the evil scientist was making to piss off Cloud and company.
I mean Hojo is obviously evil enough to try to achieve something like that, but evil as he is, he is not stupid, if he wanted to make a hybrid, it would make a lot more sense to extract the ovum from Aerith and the sperm cells from Red XII, combine them in controlled conditions, and then implant the fecundated ovum in Aerith´s womb (That is, assuming it is even possible to crossbred a Cetra / Human with a Panther / Fire Dog / Hellhound whatever the heck Red XIII is supposed to be).
Instead he just locks Aerith in a crystal tank, fully clothed and unrestrained, and then puts Red XII into the same crystal tank without any other kind of preparation, now remember that up to that point Red XII has been hiding his true intelligence from Hojo, so as far as Hojo knows, Red XIII is basically a wild animal, that would mean that Hojo’s “plan” was to lock together a scared girl and a feral obviously carnivore animal, and hope that they will start err… “mating” instead of naturally try to kill each other.
Unless previous experiments have shown that Red XII has a natural propensity to try to r.a.p.e. any female of any species that he is presented with, Hojos “breeding” plan is beyond retarded, unless it all was just a dirty joke at the expense of the poor flower girl. (Actuallyg that sound exactly like the type of sense of humor a guy like Hojo would have).
If anything the dialog, there need a little
more editing, because right after the incident Tifa says (talking about Aerith) “She is fine… in more than one way” maybe implying that is not only she physically unhurt but that her “virtue” was not stained by the lecherous Dog Thing, and Red XII retorts saying “I have a right to choose too, I don´t like two legged things” maybe implying “Bah, I didn´t wanted to f.u.c.k. her, she is not even that hot anyway” needless to say all this sound like nonsense in the changed “breed less” scenario.
Edit because I also wanted to add that the plan to make Aerith fight to increase her powers actually make sense within the game mechanics and Shinra’s plan.
The Shinra needs Aerith because they want to use her Cetra power of communicating with the planet, in order to find information about the location of the “Promised land”, within the gameplay, Aerith´s power manifest in her limit breaks, where she basically “talks” to the planet to ask for protection / help in the battles (Healing wind, Breath of the earth, Gaia´s gospel), and as everyone else in the party, Aerith gains new limits the more monsters she kills, and the more she uses her already learned limits, This means that the more battles Aerith survives, the stronger her “communication” powers will grow, making her more useful for the plan of president Shinra, in other words Hojo’s plan was resorting to the classic RPG tradition of “grinding”, which is quite appropriated given the circumstances.
