Author: bluemist

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

Blah. Find good and hi-res screenshots elsewhere. This CG movie is so fast I always never capture the good parts. Then again, don’t just find the screenshots, watch the movie itself. To see is to believe, this is one of the coolest-looking computer-animated movies ever.

Wait, where’s the story?

Advent Children takes place two years after the events of the Final Fantasy VII game for the Playstation. Actually, I forgot the details of that game already, it was released way back 1997. That time FF7 was actually the main reason why I wanted a Playstation. It was one of the best games of all time, and arguably the most popular of the Final Fantasy series of RPG games (which seems to be already 12 of them by now). Oof, I don’t even need to reintroduce that since most probably everyone knows about the game already, including you. So okay, back to Advent Children.

Two years after FF7, it seems that the world still is a desolate place. Among the problems is a new incurable disease called Geostigma. Our heroes take a bit of breather, but now is active again because of some new threats. A group of enemies want to find Mother (Jenova), and it is up to Cloud to stop them before another bad thing like Sephiroth happens.

Well, look at the paragraph. That basically sums up the plot. It almost seems like an entire filler episode that merely closes some plot holes in the original game story. I tend to think that Advent Children is a movie to serve hungry fans, and I know they will succeed wildly, very wildly.

The main point here is the visuals. This may be a notch lower in quality as compared to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but it compensates with style. Coolness is the name of the game. Many characters here were even computerized to look like jpop or jrock artists! And looking at them moving with impossible moves during the action sequences, this bends reality even more than any other Final Fantasy. They jump dozens of stories up, fight during high-speed motorcycle chases, battle a crazily big Bahamut, and even do stuff better than the Matrix guys would ever imagine. If anime were a CG movie, this is it. Everything is stunningly cool and beautiful.

Fans of Final Fantasy music will be given lots of love, because most of the background music are rehashes and remixes of existing Final Fantasy music. It’s like you’re playing the game all over again. Even an easter egg too, as one of the characters has a FF victory theme ringtone in his cellphone! I personally like the Advent version of Sephiroth’s theme, remixed to a slight rock style, and it blends very well with the amazing action scene.

But as I said, the story seems shallow. Other than ironing out some FF7 plot wrinkles, this does nothing else except introduce a new enemy, which gets defeated at the end of the movie anyway. It’s like your typical filler Naruto arc, it ends oh so quickly. I can even imagine a new FF7 plot starting X years later featuring the same characters and a new enemy, etc. As I said, this is service for the fans. Look at Square Enix now, promoting this movie along with their new FF7 sidestory games. Back in my game playing days I won’t believe that a Final Fantasy would have some sequels and sidestories. I guess the games industry had it bad lately, relying on sequels and stuff like that to make pretty profits. This is the same with this movie, milking the classic FF7.

Well then again, nothing too wrong about that. When the fans get what they want, they should be happy. I think many will be happy with this movie. Since there aren’t too many CG movies yet, this ranks among the very best of them. Despite the lack of plot, I enjoyed this movie very much. In movies like this, criticizing the story is a minor nitpick. It’s best to just sit back, relax, and enjoy the high energy CG action.

Enjoy Tifa, Yuffie and Aeris eye candy too. They’re now millions of polygons sexier than their blocky PS1 version counterparts. Isn’t that consolation enough?