Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

"Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children provides great closure to all loose ends in the world of FFVII and is a must-see for any fan of the game."

Final Fantasy VII, the role playing game of 1997 that started everything. Before Final Fantasy VII was released in North America role playing games were never considered a popular genre among video games. Sure, there was Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger, but the genre was still generally kept within a certain group of gamers. However, once the Super Nintendo's life span was over Squaresoft and Nintendo gave their farewells and Squaresoft moved over to the newcomer, Sony with their Playstation game console.

Sony had a different view than Nintendo. They were not going to tone down the Final Fantasy games; they would remain how they were originally intended to be made. Upon creating Final Fantasy VII the attitude "anything goes" was applied here. Final Fantasy was used to being set in a medieval fantasy world with knights, magicians and magical creatures. Final Fantasy VII changed all that. It had swearing, machine guns, a futuristic/modern day setting, nothing for Final Fantasy would ever be the same again.

Story:
Two years have passed since Cloud & Co. defeated Sephiroth in the Northern Crater and supposedly saved the world. However not all went as planned. The ending of Final Fantasy VII was left particularly open to the players' imagination. What exactly happened was never fully explained, although for those of you who need a refresher course I shall recap the ending for you. In the end, Sephiroth had managed to summon meteor, Cloud and Co. were able to destroy the barrier protecting the Northern Crater thanks to the help of Rufus Shinra and Diamond Weapon. Upon entering the Northern Crater Cloud and Co. did battle against Jenova and finally met up with Sephiroth's body, which fell into the lifestream five years ago after Cloud threw him in during the Nibleheim events in the mako reactor. After Sephiroth was finally defeated they still failed, meteor was going to crash into the planet. However even though Aerith's Holy managed to be summoned it could not stop meteor, and the planet appeared to be doomed. However the planet had other plans for itself, and used the lifestream to stop meteor, Aerith's face appeared for a moment on the screen and the game ended. After this, a short cinematic was shown displaying Red XIII five hundred years later enjoying the planet which was torment free and an overgrown Midgar.

Now two years have passed. Cloud lives by himself in the church where he met Aerith and since the ending of the game has begun to become depressed about her death again. For anyone wondering why Cloud has become depressed again, after he seemed too got over it during the game, the logic behind this seems to be that Cloud never really had the chance to get over Aerith's death. Most of the other characters are off doing their own thing and Tifa lives in a new 7th Heaven bar looking after Marlene and Denzel, who is an orphan. After Sephiroth was destroyed everything wasn't all happy like they thought it would be. There is now an illness spreading all over called "Geostigma" that is causing people to die. Cloud and Denzel have this disease and Cloud has basically given up on life waiting for death in the church. However, certain events transpire that cause Cloud to really realize what is going on.

Three mysterious young men occur and start wreaking havoc in Edge (the new city built around meteors impact area) and its surrounding territory. These men appear, abduct the orphans and steal Cloud's materia. Rufus Shinra has also miraculously survived, and he learns from Kadaj (the leader of the three men) that they could easily bring back Sephiroth if they could bring Jenova's head into their possession. This brings us to the movies main plot: Cloud, with the help of Rufus, Reno & Rude and trying to prevent Kadaj and his gang from bringing back Sephiroth. Along the way Cloud comes to terms with the death of Aerith and familiar friends return to aid him in the battle to save the planet from a deadly disease and the menace of Sephiroth once again.

Graphics:
Advent Children is perhaps the best animated movie to ever be created. The visuals are simply an astonishing work of art. All of the characters are brought to life in updated looks with amazing CGI animation. The scenery is absolutely phenomenal, and in some cases appears almost real, in fact too real. The characters are also absolutely breath taking. In some ways it is quite bizarre seeing Cloud, who went from being a deformed pixelated RPG character into a disturbingly lifelike character in a movie.

The action sequences are where this movie really makes it stand out. Advent Children has loads of style and every fight sequence is a rush of excitement. Although if the fights could have improved in one area it would be that the director (Tetsuya Nomura) seemed to have enjoyed using the slow-mo feature a little too much, however it does not detract from the overall experience of the movie. Perhaps what is so amazing is that the movie almost uses a matrix-ish style of fighting and filming. If you were one who immensely enjoyed the absurd, yet insanely cool action of the Matrix films enjoying Advent Children will be no problem at all, and it makes it all the more enjoyable since it is all computer animated. While in the Matrix it may seem harder to believe because it was filmed using real people, some of the insane stunts pulled off in Advent Children are more easily accepted due to the fact that one is already aware of the fact that the characters are not really real. However, this is where the movie succeeds. Although one knows the characters are not real, the characters are so lifelike and have such emotion it is easily forgettable while watching that these characters do not really exist, and one even becomes attached to them, especially if one was already fond of these characters from the video game.

Sound/Music:
Nobuo Uematsu returns to the world of Final Fantasy VII once again to deliver a superb sound track, with remixes of everyone's favourites, along with plenty of new tracks which are wonderful to listen to. Tracks such as "Those Who Fight Further" (Boss Battle theme from FFVII), "One-Winged Angel" (Sephiroth final battle theme), and Aerith's theme return in new and remixed versions, and are better than ever. Especially the Advent Children version of "One Winged Angel" renamed "Advent: One-Winged Angel" as since it was not one of my favourites from the game, with the Advent Children version I have become to enjoy this track much more than I originally did. Even the main theme of the game has been re-done in an Advent Children version which in some ways is much superior to the original as well. The movie features many new tracks as well, one which stood out for me was the track "Water" which is a slower more peaceful track but is wonderful to listen to.

Voice acting wise, fans that prefer the original Japanese voices will be pleased to know that Advent Children features both the original Japanese voice acting with English, among many other subtitles and also comes with some very impressive English voice acting which is dubbed quite well. However disappointingly Advent Children is not motion captured for the English voices, although even though it is "dubbed" it was done impressively well and there are only a few areas where it is noticeable, but most areas are dubbed properly to the lip movements. This does lead to a few minors problems though, since some of the dialog has been changed around a bit to look better with the lip movements so there is the awkward sentence here and there.

The sound effects are superb, while anyone watching will be completely absorbed by the graphics and the awesome music the sound effects are there and although not very noticeable as much considering the other awesome eye candy the sound effects sound really cool, especially the sword fighting and gun shots.

Extra Features:
The DVD version comes with a second disc containing multiple trailers for Advent Children and also several trailers for other upcoming "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" games, including Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and finally a trailer for Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children itself. Many may be aware of the OVA titled Last Order: Final Fantasy VII, which was included in the Japanese release of Advent Children and was a short animated film concerning the events of Cloud, Zack, Sephiroth and Tifa in Nibleheim five years ago. Disappointingly it is not included in the English release of the film although there is a possibility that it may be featured with Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, as the trailer for Crisis Core is compiled of Last Order footage. (Although I can confirm that while Last Order was interesting to watch you are not missing out anything, since it is essentially an anime of the Nibleheim flashback). There is also a Making of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children feature which is included which has interviews with many people involved in the making of Advent Children, mostly of Tetsuya Nomura, but featuring others such as Nobuo Uematsu.

On the main DVD containing the movie there is also a featured labelled "Reminiscence of Final Fantasy VII" which essentially recaps the events of the game in about twenty five minutes. However anyone unfamiliar with the games storyline would be better off reading a summary of it on the internet since the game footage is from the Japanese version of the game and subtitles must be enabled to understand anything.

Final Thoughts:
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is a film that gives great closure to the Final Fantasy VII game. Many unanswered questions are finally solved and Cloud has finally properly gotten over the death of Aerith which he blamed himself for, for so long. It also finishes the epic struggle between Cloud and Sephiroth, and as you may have noticed the climax of the movie features an epic battle between the two, but even then the movie hints that it is still not necessarily over.

For deciding between the DVD or UMD, the DVD seems like the more logical choice, as it contains a bonus DVD full of features and is viewable on a television where it can be greatly enjoyed on a large screen. However the PSP version is also worth a look for those who love movies on their PSP but if you only want one or the other the DVD is strongly recommended over the PSP version.

While Advent Children does contain certain flaws it is still essentially an amazing movie that was made for a certain audience. People like me, who have played and enjoyed Final Fantasy VII. Advent Children is personally not highly recommended if you haven't played the game as anyone who has not will be confused; although the movie does give a summary of the game it is quite vague. The movie is certainly watch-able and enjoyable by non players of the game but only if you go into this movie with an open mind, otherwise you will end up not liking it too much by the end. If you want to fully enjoy this film it is highly suggested that you read a summary of the game prior to viewing it, or even play through the game itself. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is a technically amazing film, which features amazing graphics, amazing audio and ties all lose ends of the Final Fantasy VII game.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/12/06