Sephiroth's Fall

 I started Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's Hard Mode today, playing through the game's first chapter, which is a flashback to Sephiroth's descent into madness in Nibelheim. What struck me when I first played through it was the tragedy of it all - Sephiroth, prior to this incident, looks like he was genuinely a heroic, benevolent figure (albeit one who was fighting for an evil corporate empire, but then, who wasn't back then?) Shinra Manor, the facility that, according to Tifa, provided the bulk of Nibelheim's funding thanks to the rent they could charge for it, is right out of a gothic horror story - a decrepit mansion with dark secrets in its basement. And the story told of Sephiroth there fits well with the gothic horror vibes: a terrible truth that causes someone who once seemed like a noble man to turn into a bloodthirsty murderer.

The theme of madness and monstrous transformation in gothic horror often pairs well with the more recent genre of cosmic horror. And, as is fairly common, FFVII does contain strong cosmic horror elements.

What I hadn't realized when I played through this the first time was a classic cosmic horror and science fiction trope: the scientists who meddled with things they did not actually understand.

I'd be tempted to put this behind a spoiler cut, but this is all stuff from the original 1997 game, so the statute of limitations on this expired a while ago. Reader beware.

The world of FFVII is one in which the "Ancients" (real name being the "Cetra") once ruled before being overthrown by humanity. (I'll take a moment here to quibble with the idea of any "race" or "family" or "people" being older than any other - in the real world, at least, every human's ancestors have been on this planet for just as long as anyone else's, because they all converge at Mitochondrial Eve. Admittedly, the Cetra are presented as being a separate species from humans, but A: they're clearly co-fertile with humans given that Aerith exists and B: we don't have any origin story in which the gods descended upon the world and put the first humans there). Anyway, when Jenova is discovered by archaeologists or paleontologists (though they seem to be reaching back only 2000 years, which would argue for the former) the scientists believe her to be a remarkably preserved Cetra.

And I hadn't realized this, but Sephiroth reads these studies on them and believes the same: he thinks that, as a Cetra... created by kind of cloning Cetra tissue, that he should thus count humanity as his enemies - the people who wiped out his people. This is what leads him to believe that he deserves to inherit the world and why he feels justified in wiping out humanity.

There are two giant ironies here.

The first is that, in fact, Aerith is a Cetra, or at least a half-Cetra (there are actually a weirdly large number of recurring plot elements that VII borrowed from VI, with Aerith and Terra both being half-long-lost-magical-being and the main villain being a kind of prototype super soldier who develops godly aspirations). Infamously, in the original game (and whether or not it happens in Rebirth is something I'll still consider a spoiler) Sephiroth abruptly kills Aerith. It's not clear to me if he realizes that he's killing the actual last Cetra in the self-righteous aim to reclaim what he thinks is his birthright. It seems rather fitting that the one who might at this point still think he's the rightful "guardian of the planet" thinks that his role is to kill, while Aerith, an actual guardian, seeks to protect and bring about harmony. He's all vengeance and hatred, but Aerith, we see, doesn't really hate anyone (not that she doesn't get mad). And if their respective spells, Sephiroth's Meteor and Aeriths' Holy, represent these two worldviews, despite the fact that he ends her mortal life, on a spiritual level, she's the one who emerges triumphant.

The other irony, of course, is that he's not Cetra. Jenova does look like a human (well, Cetra) woman in the facility where he finds her, but that's not because she is one. In the last major dungeon of Rebirth, we go through the Temple of the Ancients, and there we find records left behind by the Cetra that an eldritch horror from outer space came and devastated their civilization, and it was able to do so because it could mimic others - taking on the form of lost loved ones and seeming like an angelic visitor. Only at great cost were the Cetra able to imprison Jenova, sealing her in the rock where a bunch of Shinra scientists would dig her up thousands of years later.

I think there's an interesting question - and perhaps one that has been explored in the various prequels and side-projects related to FFVII - as to whether Sephiroth was doomed to madness and evil all along. After all, he has some kind of parasitic Lovecraftian monstrosity in the very core of his being. Maybe this was all inevitable. Still, it's remarkable how likable the guy is in the bulk of that flashback. He just goes from good guy to mass-murderer very quickly.

Granted: Cloud is an unreliable narrator in this flashback - he's imagined himself performing the great feats of heroism that Zack did, a close friend whose entire existence he's forgotten about. While Tifa doesn't remember his being there, it seems pretty clear (and I believe confirmed in the original game) that the nameless Shinra Trooper that doesn't get dragged away by the river is actually Cloud - we see him crawling, wounded, toward the Strife house as it burns, calling out for his mother. He was probably just too shy to take off his helmet and let Tifa know that he was there.

But we could also imagine that perhaps the portrayal of Sephiroth in this flashback might not be fully accurate - the story we're told is of a man finding out his life is a lie and jumping real quick to "I'm going to murder everyone." I mean, that could still be the case, this being high melodrama and all.