On September 15, 2013, I had finished a blog entry analyzing Sephiroth, the main villain of Final Fantasy 7, where I made the argument that he was overrated because his motivations were unclear. However, it had been pointed out to me that I missed some key details regarding Sephiroth's history, which explains his motivations better. Mistakes were made on my part, and upon reexamining the game, as well as the data available to me, I am certain that I can revisit Sephiroth, to see if I truly was wrong to call him overrated. This is a second analysis of Sephiroth.
Sephiroth's portrait during his short tenure in the party.
Let's discuss Sephiroth, the legend. This is the Sephiroth every NPC knows, the ultimate SOLDIER. Sephiroth rose to prominence during the Wutai War, an armed conflict between the Shinra Electric Power Company, and the country of Wutai. Sephiroth served as a warrior for Shinra, a member of its elite fighting force known as SOLDIER. What that acronym stands for, I still don't know to this day. In any case, Sephiroth became instrumental in ensuring Shinra's victory. His strength proved unreal, and his name became a legend among the people. Many young men began to idolize him, all wishing to join SOLDIER in hopes of becoming just like the great Sephiroth. As far as the people of the world know, Sephiroth died on a routine mission due to unknown causes.
Now we discuss Sephiroth, the man. An outwardly cold man, Sephiroth was a professional warrior through and through. Although his strength spoke for itself, Sephiroth was more of an aloof man, cordial and patient when off duty, but all business otherwise. He was a man who could socialize with his fellow soldiers, and in fact he was often very cordial, even pleasant with the SOLDIER rookies. However, he was a man with a chip on his shoulders. He had never known his father, and all he knew of his mother was her name: Jenova.
Consider how Sephiroth is depicted in Cloud's flashback. Sephiroth converses with Cloud rather easily, asking him about how he feels returning home after so long. Sephiroth then freely admits he doesn't have a hometown, so he does not know the feeling of "coming home". In such a short conversation, we see in Sephiroth a yearning for what many of us take for granted: Sephiroth doesn't have a home town. This is a very human reaction, and it makes his eventual downfall all the more tragic.
Did Sephiroth have friends? Here is where we consult the Compilation. Crisis Core showed that Sephiroth did, indeed, have close friends: Angeal and Genesis. Both end up dying before the Nibelheim incident, however, due to reasons that are much too complex to discuss on this entry. And in any case, I am still not entirely convinced the Compilation was truly needed. But the point is, Sephiroth did, indeed, have friends. Close friends, in fact.
The point I'm trying to make is that Sephiroth was a normal man, before the Nibelheim Incident. But, what could have made him change so much? How do you go from a professional soldier, to a genocidal madman?
And this is where we look at the Nibelheim Incident. Sephiroth's last mission as a member of Soldier was supposed to be a routine checkup. His mission: go to the Nibelheim Mako Reactor, check on why there's an increase of monster activity, report back. Simple enough; what could go wrong? Just for kicks, he's accompanied by Zack, another member of SOLDIER, not that he needs any help.
The game establishes that members of SOLDIER are showered in Mako, which is the spirit energy that flows through the earth, responsible for all life. What's found inside the Mako reactor? Humanoid monsters, sealed in chambers filled with Mako. Sephiroth nonchalantly establishes that any lifeforms who get overexposed to Mako suffer mutations, and that this is normal for how SOLDIER treats its new members. Sephiroth, however, gets asked by Zack if he (Sephiroth) went through the same thing.
This is where the Compilation complicates things, because in Crisis Core it's shown that Genesis was there, too, and he had a hand in Sephiroth's descent to madness. But just to keep everything from getting too muddy, let's ignore that scene, and focus on Sephiroth himself.
Now, why would this simple question hit Sephiroth so hard? For that, we'll need to examine his youth.
We know very little of Sephiroth's early life, but we DO know a few important facts. First off, Sephiroth believes his mother's name is Jenova. Second, we know he always felt different from the other kids. Third, his mother's name isn't Jenova, it's Lucrecia. And his father's name is Hojo.
Hojo and Lucrecia were two scientists who worked on something called the Jenova Project. Thirty years before the game began, Shinra discovered the remains of an unknown being that they believed to be a Cetra. The Cetra were humans who could communicate with the Planet, and it's subtly implied they could use magic too. The being was given the name "Jenova", and in an attempt to bring the Cetra back from extinction, the Jenova Project was approved.
This is where the Compilation fills in some details that are necessary to understand Sephiroth. A scientist by the name of Dr. Hollander considered imbuing a human specimen with cells from Jenova, so as to create a new breed of Cetra. To do this, he injected Jenova cells into a woman named Gillian Hewley, who would in turn pass the cells unto her unborn child. The child was Angeal Hewley, who would later become Sephiroth's friend. Hojo, however, decided to cut out the middle man and directly inject Jenova cells into an unborn fetus. The test subject? His own unborn child, Sephiroth. Though neither child exhibited the powers of the Cetra, they were still superhuman. Sephiroth, however, proved to be the superior specimen, because unlike Angeal, he wasn't decaying.
Now, what does this have to do with anything? Simple: Sephiroth read up on the Jenova Project after visiting the Mako Reactor in Nibelheim. It's implied he read up on some details regarding his own origins, but it's clear the records in the Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim didn't go too into detail. He knew of Gast, the man who discovered Jenova. He respected Gast. He also knew about Hojo, a man he felt was unfit to follow Ghast's legacy. For all intents and purposes, he's right: Gast is spoken of being a generally nice man, and Hojo's the kind of guy who'd experiment on unborn fetuses. Now imagine finding out THAT guy was your father, and that YOU were that fetus.
Imagine finding out you were conceived just to be experimented on. Imagine being conceived by a madman who saw you as just another test subject. Imagine living over twenty years of your life thinking that your mother died giving birth to you, only to find out the woman you thought was your mother wasn't what you thought she was. Now imagine that you happily and willingly fought for, and killed for, the people who KNEW about all this and kept it from you. Imagine that they treated you like an ERRAND BOY when you were always powerful enough to snap their necks with little effort.
That's what Sephiroth went through.
Sephiroth's mind snapped on that trip to Nibelheim, and it's easy to see why. This horrid revelation came from one simple realization: SOLDIER members are not just showered in Mako, they are injected with Jenova cells. It is implied that Sephiroth had no memories of being showered with Mako, or of being injected with Jenova cells. But what really made him snap was the revelation of what he truly was: an experiment.
Sephiroth saw himself as an experiment, not a person. Suddenly, everything seemed to fall into place for him. Why did his buddies die? Because they were like him, too. They were experiments, just like him. He lived a lonely life, without a family, and now he knew why. He was not normal.
Some people, when confronted with a life changing revelation, tend to reexamine themselves. That's what Sephiroth did. However, Sephiroth had a HUGE chip on his shoulder. He needed answers, but the ONE man who could give them to him was dead: Gast, the man in charge of the Jenova Project. While reading on the Jenova Project, Sephiroth asks himself "Gast, why didn't you tell me? Why did you have to die?" For that brief moment, Sephiroth is not the greatest warrior in the Planet, the ace of Shinra; he's a child again, pleading for answers to questions that overwhelm him.
But, why would he burn down Nibelheim? Sephiroth snapped, pure and simple. His mind couldn't reconcile what he had learned, so he started spinning everything into a new narrative: He's a Cetra, he's not like everyone else. The Cetra were wiped out because of non Cetra humans. He was created by the non Cetra to lead them into the Promised Land. He was made to be an errand boy.
He won't let them treat him like that. He and his mother, Jenova, will exact revenge on everybody. EVERYBODY. That's why he burnt down Nibelheim: it was just him getting started on what would eventually be a revenge taken to a global scale.
But he hit a snag: Cloud Strife, a 16 year old grunt working for Shinra. The boy bested Sephiroth, and threw him down the Lifestream. problem, though: any living being that gets exposed to Mako, which is what the Lifestream is made of, gets to mutate. A few days were enough to make Cloud go comatose. Sephiroth spent five years in the Lifestream.
The Lifestream is filled with the souls of those who lived in the world, carrying the knowledge and wisdom of thousands of generations prior. From this, Sephiroth learned about Meteor, and of how the Planet uses the Lifestream to heal itself whenever something wounds it. It is here that Sephiroth begins his plan: use Meteor, wound the planet, fuse with the energy being used, become a god.
The irony is that, during this time, Sephiroth could have communicated with Gast. But by now his heart, and mind, would have been too wounded to listen to anyone. He was too far gone to listen to anyone. He was no longer a man, he was a monster, just like the ones he saw in Nibelheim. And monsters need to be put down.
Cloud was the man who destroyed Sephiroth, or at least most of him. Aeris, the true last descendant of the Cetra, destroyed his ambition by stopping Meteor. But Sephiroth's hate lives on, and will continue to live on, forever. He's not a man, he's not even a monster anymore, he's a specter, an echo of a growl and a snarl from a child who was angry and confused about who he was.
In the end, who was Sephiroth? He was a man, he was a friend, he was a soldier, he was a hero, he was a madman, he was a monster, he is a specter. He is one of the most famous video game characters of all time, and one of the best villains ever. I take back what I said about him: he's not overrated.
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