The World of Final Fantasy VII as a Reflection of Modern Japan

So Crisis Core comes out for the PSP today in the states. I gotta say, I have mixed feelings about it. I keep hearing that is has an outstanding story, which accents Final Fantasy VII. For this reason I am very excited. However, I don’t know how I feel about the addition of some new bad guys who are supposedly as bad-ass as Sephiroth… I guess I will wait and see what everyone thinks.

To celebrate I want to explain the underlying elements of Japanese thought which are persistent throughout the game. Before getting into it, this post assumes the reader has played Final Fantasy VII and is familiar with its themes and major events which occur in its world. If you have NOT played the game, reading on may spoil parts of the game and be a tad confusing.

Let us start with Makou, or Mako energy, a substance which is contained in all life on the face of the planet (including the planet itself). Bugenhagen, Red XIII’s “father” explains that when a creature dies, its mako returns to the earth, and is transferred into a new living being. Unlike most energies, it is extinguishable when consumed by Shin-ra’s reactors AND there is a limited amount of it.

The cyclical aspect of mako “life”, is very similar to life as seen in eastern religions such as Buddhism’s idea of samsara or reincarnation. Life does not have a clear beginning and end like it does in the west. There is no heaven and no hell,–just transition. In addition to Buddhism, mako also has characteristics of nature seen through Shinto, Japan’s native folk religion. According to Shinto all elements of nature have a kind of energy and purity to them. Therefore tampering with nature, effectively destroys this purity or energy.

The fact that mako is consumable by Shin-ra’s reactors is where things get a bit more complex. Japan began modernizing rapidly during the Meiji restoration, and going on until the Taisho era. This time period marked an increasing dependence on industrialization. The earth was scoured for resources, forests were cleared, and enormous factories were constructed. The Japanese government was the main force pushing these advances, and part of the force behind the government were Zaibatsu, or mega-corporations, which existed since the early Meiji period.

Shin-ra can be seen as one of these Zaibatsu or mega-corporations, advancing the world of the game with their industrial technology, the mako reactors, by consuming mako, or the planets life-fource. While these parallel events were taking place in Japan, there was a sense that this advancement came at a cost. A character in the village of Kalm explains her feelings to Cloud:

“Mako energy’s made things a lot more convenient…..”
“But it seems like a lot of plants and animals have been
disappearing at a rapid pace.”
“I think the old life was better.”
“Don’t you think so?”

_{credits to Little Chiba}

The world of Final Fantasy VII was once home to the ancients, a race of nomadic people who could speak with the earth and understand its deeper workings. As time went on, some members of the ancients stopped wandering and began settling down, losing the ability to communicate with the earth. These individuals are who became the populace of the earth, and eventually the ancients all but died off. As the situation on earth becomes more dire, the characters in Final Fantasy VII turn to their ally Aerith, the last remaining ancient for guidance.

In modern Japan the ancients would be those who mastered a craft hundreds of years ago and whose teachings have been passed down for generations. These crafts can be anything from gardening to knowing how to put on a kimono properly. The more people keep up their busy lifestyles, the more these trades are forgotten, thus the ancients are still dying in Japan today.

Modern Japan regrets what it lost during the process of modernization. For this reason many forms of Japanese pop-media portray this struggle between convenience and losing touch with nature as well as a longing for simpler times. To those who get their hands on Crisis Core: do you notice any of these themes?

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