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.

Oh, My Pop Culture Church: Criticizing Organized Religion Doesn’t Have to Be Anti-Religion

Take the plot of any Final Fantasy game—we always have our spiky-haired leader with a giant sword, some dude named Cid, chocobos, moogles, and many more similarities. The games also give us some evil force attempting to wipe out all of humanity. But another thing the narratives also have in common is an all-powerful, corrupt organization or government that controls the world. In Final Fantasy VII, this was the Shinra company. In FFXII, it was the invading country of Archadia. In FFXIII, we have the Sanctum. And in Final Fantasy X, our corrupt organization is Yevon, the leading religion in the world of Spira.

Final Fantasy uses a lot of mythology, and it’s not always accurate to the religions it borrows from. In other ways, the games do an immensely wonderful job with different faiths. Final Fantasy X is one of these games. FFX opens up a discussion about religion that we as consumers probably need. While Final Fantasy does have both good and bad religious representation, the games are not shy about criticizing the faiths they borrow from.

I wouldn’t say that the Final Fantasy games are being overtly anti-religious in any game. Or, at the very least, I wouldn’t say that the games are specifically created with an anti-religious agenda. Final Fantasy’s big thing, though, is that it criticizes people with power, and religion is just one avenue through which it does so.

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.

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: The Sexism

Well, like any RPG in the history of ever, you don’t have to look too hard to find sexism in the Final Fantasy series. And that unfortunately includes FFX. At this point, it’s really not very surprising to see women objectified in games and to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to talk about how sexist this game is, because when you compare it to other games, it’s really not that bad. On a whole, Final Fantasy tends to be fairly good about this sort of thing. Yeah, we got large-breasted ladies like Tifa from VII—the game that also brought us Yuffie, the girl who is incapable of zipping up her shorts.

But I don’t think I’ve ever seen the women in these games pose for the sake of posing. At least nothing immediate comes to mind until I start thinking about X. And even though X seems to have more objectification than other Final Fantasy games, it’s still nowhere near as bad as other games as a whole, and it doesn’t forget that the women need personality and motivations as well. I’d honestly much rather talk about sexism in the sequel X-2, just because there’s more fodder to work with. But that’s a review for another time.

So here we go! Sexism in Final Fantasy X!

Ace plays Final Fantasy X: The Characterization

Well, now that we’re nearing the end of this miniseries, there aren’t too many things left to cover. I just spent the past five posts analyzing the plot, Yuna as Jesus, the religion of Yevon as a whole, how the game deals with death, and how the summons work. This leads me into the characters as a whole.

Final Fantasy X was a significant development for the franchise, and it has gone down for many as the “last good Final Fantasy game.” Even if you haven’t read my earlier posts or my reviews for some of the other Final Fantasy games, you can probably guess that I don’t agree with that. But I can most assuredly see why people feel the way they do about this installment in the franchise. I may have my issues with it, but this game offered a lot at the time it came out. The graphics are beautiful, and when it was released, they shocked people because of how realistic they looked compared to the other games. Visually, Final Fantasy X is stunning, and even nowadays, the graphics aren’t bad. On top of that, musically, it’s pretty amazing as well. And the visuals and the audios do a decent job of complementing each other.

Just from something like that, this game is very appealing. And it’s very easy to tell that a lot of effort went into its production. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a Final Fantasy game, and this one delivers all that and more. In fact, Square Enix has plans to remaster it for a PS3 release, in order to redeliver the experience of playing such a high quality game. I may have just spent the past five posts more or less bitching and nitpicking everything, and I do have more complaints about how this story is told, but Final Fantasy X has a lot of redeeming qualities to it. And most, if not all, of the bad qualities concerning its gameplay and production will more than likely be fixed if it actually does get remastered.

So let’s talk about the characters.

Ace plays Final Fantasy X: The Aeons

Continuing on with this series, I am unfortunately not done talking about the religion in Final Fantasy X. I’ve already gone over what Yevon is, but I have not talked about what it entails. Or rather, I haven’t talked about its foundation in detail. And just as a warning, while my other posts have had spoilers in them, this one will have a lot more.

Anyway, if you want to continue reading, Yevon is centered on the aeons, which are essential in order for summoners to defeat Sin. Most simply, aeons are powerful creatures that summoners can summon and control at will, but it is more complicated than that. I’ve already gone over both the portrayal of religion and the dead, which are also essential to understanding what the aeons actually are. A dead person is comprised of pyreflies, which act as a soul, more or less. Sometimes dead people will become angry and turn into monsters, while other times, they’ll manifest as ghosts. And in keeping with the general theme of Final Fantasy X, aeons also come from the dead, though aeons themselves are not dead. More accurately, they’re the manifestation of dreams of the dead.

While some dead people become fiends and others become ghosts, a small few will become fayths. Fayths are people who died willingly and had their souls forever trapped inside stone statues. Every Yevon temple in Spira has at least one statue. When summoners travel to the different temples, they enter something called The Cloister of Trials. Once completing that task, a summoner may enter The Chamber of the Fayth, where he or she can pray to the fayth’s statue for a way to defeat Sin. If the fayth answers the summoner’s prayers, the fayth will then grant that summoner its aeon. Summoners must train by praying at temples and obtaining as many aeons as possible or they will never become strong enough to gain the power of the Final Aeon, which is the only aeon that can defeat Sin.

It is the aeons that are responsible for both destroying Sin and rebirthing it over and over again. Unfortunately, like every other good idea in this game, something has to ruin it. So besides Yevon using machina, what I’m about to talk about is the other incredibly large plot hole that could have very easily been fixed.

Ace plays Final Fantasy X: The Dead

Final Fantasy X has so many religious themes going on. Of course, that’s not surprising when you establish a world heavily ingrained with religion and base that religion on three very popular faiths and ways of life: Buddhism, Shintoism, and Catholicism. Sometimes, FFX feels as though it’s all over the place, as if the writers couldn’t figure out which religion should dominate. But for the most part, and excusing any plot holes, Yevon seems like a solid faith that I could see existing given certain circumstances.

But like with all things religious, an afterlife must exist, so it’s only natural that Final Fantasy X makes mention of the dead. In fact, if there’s one aspect more dominating than religion in the game, it would be how the dead affect the living. And also like with everything else involving this game and my over-thinking things, yes, I found some more plot holes.

Ace plays Final Fantasy X: The Oppressive Religious Plot Hole

So I’ve already gone over Seymour and Yuna, and now I’m talking about Yevon. Yevon is the main faith in Final Fantasy X. Just about everyone follows it, and it makes sense that they would. Yevon’s teachings are the only thing providing the people of Spira hope, and it’s been the only thing providing that for the past thousand years. Sin keeps killing people and Yevon is their only way out. Summoners pray at temples run by Yevonites, which probably only enforces the belief that it is through following Yevon’s teachings that Sin will ever truly be destroyed. And when you have a world living in such terror, with their only escape being the church, it also makes sense that Yevon is the leading political power in Spira.

Yevon is actually a very interesting faith, and it is unfortunately not explored to the extent that I wish it would have been. It has a lot in common with Buddhism, Shintoism, and Catholicism. It requires a lot of disciplines for its followers—not using machina, which is what the people call machines—and some of its iconography is indicative of Buddhism. The temples and all the ritualistic practices are very similar to Shintoism, and as for the Catholic Church, it has a very similar hierarchy. Yevon is led by a Grand Maester (basically the Pope), and beneath him are three other Maesters (Cardinals). And then there are the people under them, so on and so forth.

People who don’t follow Yevon, like the Al Bhed, are frowned upon and considered heretics. Though the game does show people being killed for not following Yevon, it honestly surprises me that it doesn’t happen more, and it can even be argued that the Al Bhed who are killed are murdered for other reasons. The amount of scorn non-Yevonites face makes me surprised that executions based on faith, or lack thereof, are not common, especially considering that there are orders to kill Yuna after she is excommunicated.

But when a faith is established as the leading political power, while it’s not a big surprise that the leaders may be corrupt and while we can also argue that Yevon may have brainwashed the people of Spira, that doesn’t mean it can get away with some of the things it does. It doesn’t matter how corrupt an organization is, if it purposefully flaunts its hypocrisy people are going to notice every time. And that’s what happens in Final Fantasy X.

Ace plays Final Fantasy X: The Religion

Last time I talked about the plot of the game. More specifically, I talked about one of the game’s primary antagonists and how he has nothing to do with plot. The character is question is Seymour, who was a maester of Yevon, an oppressive religious organization and the leading political power in Spira. This leads me into the religion in Final Fantasy X.

First of all, before I get into Yevon, let’s talk about the obvious. A few weeks back I wrote an Oh, My Pop-Culture Jesus post about Aerith from VII as a female Christ figure. I should note that I could probably do the same for Yuna, but I don’t feel as though I would be able to write a decent OMPCJ about her that didn’t repeat most of what I said about Aerith. And to be honest, it would just be a cheap way for me to fill that monthly quota. I should note that the two of them are the same character type; they are both presented as selfless Virgin Mary figures, but have more in common with Jesus than Mary. In some ways, Yuna is a more obvious Christ figure than Aerith, especially because VII doesn’t really talk about religion, whereas X does. And Yevon is partly influenced by Catholicism, although I should mention that Yevon is also influenced by Buddhism and Shintoism.