Magical Mondays: The Power of Clothing in Final Fantasy X-2

As someone who sells artwork at anime conventions, one of the things I look forward to most is seeing everyone’s cosplay. Being able to dress up and put time and effort into bringing a beloved character to life can be a magical experience in the real world. What’s especially great is seeing people in the different costumes that a single character may wear over the course of a story.

(via WTF Gamers Only)

Clothing can be a powerful narrative tool—sometimes certain clothes can give some character new and special abilities. Other times, the clothing can be a symbol of internal change, growth, and a renewed sense of confidence. This can be an especially important mechanic for video games, and my best experience with this was in Final Fantasy X-2.

Magical Mondays: Sephiroth is an Aeon

Whether you love it or hate it, Final Fantasy X is a prequel to Final Fantasy VII. Thankfully, for everyone who dislikes this connection, the two games don’t actually impact each other in terms of plot or characterization. However, for the rest of us, it’s always fun speculating about all the different ways the two games are alike and figuring out the history of both their worlds. This connection is something the game creators have been adding to for some time, and considering that Auron shows up in the new FFVII remake trailer, I imagine that we’re going to have a few more hints and Easter eggs in our future. And yet, somehow, I found myself surprised when Kingdom Hearts turned Sephiroth into an Aeon.

Magical Mondays: Dancing and Transformation

It’s just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right
With your hands on your hips
You bring your knees in tight
But it’s the pelvic thrust
That really drives you insane

I’m sure these lyrics are familiar to most of you, dear readers. With the surprising prevalence of The Rocky Horror Picture Show despite its cult status, even if one hasn’t watched the film, many of its (for lack of a better term) memes have stuck in the cultural consciousness. As a younger me, while watching this I wondered what the heck a dance had to do with anything, and honestly as an adult I still don’t know for sure–although I fully know that in this film, things don’t really have to make sense. It just comes out of nowhere. But thinking a little bit harder, maybe it wasn’t as out of place as I originally thought. After all, Rocky Horror isn’t the only piece of media utilizing the magic of dancing in the way it’s typically used: to signify a transformation.

Final Fantasy X: A Prequel to Final Fantasy VII

I recently just replayed both of X’s games and VII, because hey, they are my favorite Final Fantasy games. With the exception of direct sequels, most Final Fantasy games are completely independent from each other. That’s not always true—we have the Ivalice Alliance games such as XII and Tactics that both take place in the world of Ivalice, albeit a thousand years apart from each other. But unless we’re specifically told otherwise, it’s always been safe to assume that the Final Fantasy games have no impact on each other. At least, that was the case until X-2 happened. During an interview for Final Fantasy X-2 Ultimania, Nojima confirmed that X and X-2 are prequels to VII. While the stories in the games are still more or less independent from each other, this connection allows for some interesting social and religious implications, specifically for the Al Bhed.

Fanfiction Fridays: Rebuild by owlmoose

I hate Dona.

Well, that might be a little strong. I heartily dislike Dona. Having played through Final Fantasy X-2 before the original, I always thought she was a little off-putting. Not that I expect every character to get along with the protagonists, but there was just something about her that rubbed me the wrong way. This feeling only continues to grow as I watch the events of Final Fantasy X unfold in more recent times.

Antagonistic characters are my bread and butter, but Dona never really felt like she had a solid reason for all of her bitterness and outright hatred toward Yuna. Sure, there’s the jealousy toward Yuna’s heritage and the bitterness that everything seemed to be handed to Yuna on a silver platter, but these are all inferred. The game more or less makes Dona the token bitch of the game only for the sake of conflict; a conflict that didn’t really need to exist, narratively speaking. Dona never really prods Yuna to do anything—the conflict is one-sided and directed toward Dona, and since we don’t get to see Dona’s character growth it’s all pretty much pointless.

I don’t typically go looking for fanfic of characters I dislike: I went out looking this week for a family fic about Rikku and Yuna, to be completely honest. But lo and behold, fate had me stumble upon owlmoose’s Rebuild. I’m pleased to say that this fic fills in a lot of holes that the games left.

Esuna Rather Than Later: A Plea to End the “White Mage” and How Xillia Works at Dismantling the Trope

Recently I’ve been watching my brother run through another round of Final Fantasy X. Personally, I’ve never been very into the series (except for X-2, but I think I’m in the minority there). However, seeing as it’s hailed as one of the masterpieces of the franchise, I’m more than willing to watch my brother go from temple to temple gaining summon spirits (or “aeons”, I guess) until the final summoning. It’s all very interesting and Tidus isn’t nearly as annoying as I imagined him being, but as he continues fighting through Sin spawn and other various baddies one thought has been ringing through my mind: being a white mage sucks. Not only in Spira—in many Final Fantasy games it seems as though if you’re a practitioner of the healing white magic you’re stuck healing and only healing—unless you’re also a summoner (which only aids this trope, but I’m getting ahead of myself).

Most. Boring. Class. Ever. Except maybe Alchemist… (x)

Of course, this isn’t anything new; these limitations of the white mage far extend outside of the world of Final Fantasy into other JRPGs. A white mage, in addition to replacing combat expertise with that sweet healing magic, is almost always a woman. A “pure”-seeming woman (aka virginal). Ace spoke about one of the outliers (who just so happens to be in another Final Fantasy game) in a previous article, but the trend at large still stands. Yet, in more recent titles, it seems as though developers have taken it upon themselves to finally twist this trope for the better.

Final Fantasy X, Western Beauty Standards, and the Son of Jecht

Now that Final Fantasy X has finally been remastered for the PS3, I decided to revisit the game. I did a series of in-depth reviews a while ago, and I still stand by most of what I said in them. As enjoyable as I find FFX, as much as I love it and recommend it, it is problematic in a lot of regards. And as I played through it again, it came to my attention that one of its problematic aspects is Tidus’s character design, namely his blond hair and blue eyes.

Ace plays Final Fantasy VII: The Religion

I’ve already discussed religion before in Final Fantasy VII. To be sure, there are a lot of religious themes in VII, especially when it comes to Aerith’s character, who I think is a female Christ figure. Even the background of her people—who are referred to as the Planet’s chosen people—plays off a lot of Judeo-Christian themes, such as the search for the Promised Land. Not everything involving her people, the Cetra, are Judeo-Christian in nature, though. The Temple of the Ancients, for instance, is shaped much like a ziggurat, and the one room inside it has what looks like hieroglyphics.

I’m not about to launch into another post about Aerith, however, even if I left out a lot of things in my other post. What I plan to talk about is how religion in VII affects the culture of the world, by which I mean, not very much, if at all.

Ace plays Final Fantasy X-2: The Sexism

So I guess I could do a whole other series on the sequel as I did for the original, but that’s more effort than I want to expend. As a whole, I do enjoy X and its sequel. X-2 is a bit different than what I had expected, and though I don’t believe it’s a good Final Fantasy game, it’s still a good game. The graphics are improved, as well as the voice acting, and though the battle system was fun and unique in X, I like it a lot better here.

The story follows Yuna on her quest to find spheres about the past in hopes of seeing Tidus again. She and Rikku are now sphere hunters, being helped out by a new character Paine. Also along for the ride, we have Rikku’s brother, who is actually called Brother, his buddy, named Buddy, and a small genius kid, called Shinra. Yuna, Rikku, and Paine form the playable party, while Brother, Buddy, Shinra, and everyone else are all supporting cast members. So this is, I believe, the first and only Final Fantasy game that has an all-female party.

In Final Fantasy X it can be argued that Yuna is the main character while the story is simply told from Tidus’s point of view. Here, there is no doubt that the protagonist is Yuna. So overall, considering that this game has an all-female party and should act as a means to further develop the characters and the world, it should seem like a step in the right direction for female representation. I still hold that Final Fantasy is nowhere near as sexist as other games, and to be honest, with the exception of all the breast shots of Lulu, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed sexism in this story at all if it hadn’t been for X-2.

People always assume games and stories with a mostly-female cast will alienate male audience members, as if they think that being centered on women can never be interesting enough to attract male audiences. So they try to sexualize the girls as much as possible. It’s that mindset where anything masculine can be perceived as good and entertaining, but femininity? Oh, boy, we’ve got to sex that shit up if any guy’s going to be interested in it! Lord knows, character development and story arcs aren’t enough for a fulfilling game if it’s all about women.

So this is possibly the most sexist Final Fantasy game I have ever played, just from that aspect.

Ace plays Final Fantasy X: A Response

Well, this was not the post that I had been planning on doing since I started reviewing X, but after some sound rebukes on Tumblr from my last post, Ace plays Final Fantasy X: The Sexism, I decided to not delay. And oddly enough, though I also knew what I wanted to say for my next post, which is also about sexism in Final Fantasy, some of the comments I received just really put into perspective to me how much people let Final Fantasy, or rather that they don’t notice it, get away with certain things.

It also made me realize that I certainly didn’t make my points as well as I should have. And so, before I get into the sequel and sexism, which was what I originally had planned, I’m going to address some of the things that people pointed out, because they are things that need to be addressed. And after the reactions of the last post, I also feel the need to add a disclaimer to this.

If you are under the delusion that Final Fantasy can do no wrong and is perfectly amazing in its representation of female characters, you are not going to like anything that is after the jump.