Note: This article is heavy on spoilers to both Final Fantasy VII Remake and Evangelion.

Two classics of the late 90’s, two masterpieces the authors wanted to explore more and more with every passing year. There’s a lot in common with those two, especially now with the release of Final Fantasy VII Remake. Can we see the future of one within the release of the other? Maybe. Let’s try and elaborate it. 

Evangelion originated in manga form in 1994. However, long before it could be finished in its paperback version, it was adapted to TV in 1995 and completed with high praises by the fandom and overall critics. It became a classic, a powerful representation of the anime industry of the late 90’s and an overall courageous introduction of heavy and divise themes such as psychology and religion. 

The authors were not satisfied though. The manga, yet to finish, followed a different path and dragged for nearly two decades to reach a finale. It became like a myth in the industry, a neverending story we were perhaps better left without. However, before even the manga could finish by 2013, yet another revisioning took over the saga. 

Four movies were announced in the mids 2000’s, dubbed as the rebuild of Evangelion. The very first one, released in 2007, was yet another take on the very early stages of the tale, which followed by the book the manga version and also the TV adaptation. It was likely a remake of the source material, criticized for being too much of the same, yet it had glimpses that it could follow a different path from both the manga and TV material. 

The Remake and Revisions

The second movie, released in 2009, was the real deal. It followed the source material for most of the part, yet, by the end, it completely changed the concept of the show. Instead of following with the daily routines of Shinji, Asuka, Rei, and Misato, it drastrically altered the sequences by antecipating events that were supposed to happen only by the end. The result was a drastic change of the story, so much that the next episode could not even be called Evangelion anymore. 

What followed was a complete new string of events. 

However, instead of being new and exciting, it relied too much on stuff previously developed during the late parts of the TV adaptation and the manga. This means that this was a content intended for fans and fans only.

Newcomers could only watch and torture themselves in confusion to grasp the surface of so many terms and information being popped out of thin air. It was a disaster, and maybe that’s the reason the fourth and final movie was repeatedly delayed with the excuse of its director working on other things. 

The Final Fantasy VII

Now I take a moment to make a parallel with Square’s beloved chapter of its most important franchise. Final Fantasy VII had a full and complete material in its original Playstation release. It left nothing open for chance, it was finished and wrapped very nicely. 

The marketing appeal and fanservice, however, made Square seek for new ways to revive it. 

Plenty of games and other material came from it. We had the Advent Children movie, the Crisis Core game for Playstation Portable, and the forgetable Dirge of Cerberus, not to count other minor releases of story content in a variety of media. It was always up for grabs, and even when the setting and story was not directly meddled with, the game’s cast was used somewhere else and given identifiable traits that slowly became cannon, like Sephiroth’s incarnation in Kingdom Hearts or Cloud’s appearance in Final Fantasy Tactics. 

The Final Fantasy VII Remake

Now the remake comes out and it seems we can look at Evangelion for further reference. Much like the first two movies of the rebuild of Evangelion, the Final Fantasy VII Remake is widely faithful to the original story right up until the end. 

It is important to notice the game is not named “Part One”, “Episode I”, or anything like that. It is simply Final Fantasy VII Remake. 

Let’s take a look at the final events of the game to see what that could mean. 

There we see very literal references that the party, when defeating the Arbiters of Fate, open up the future to the “unknown”. Sephiroth says that what lies ahead does not yet exists and Aerith is adamant in claiming that defeating fate would change not only the world, but themselves. 

Considering how we see Zack surviving in a crappy alternative timeline and how these Whispers were basically script tools made for future excuse to change content, we can immediately see that what we will have in the future will not be a Remake at all. It will be like Evangelion all over again, a new thing completely different from the original. 

Perhaps we will still see classical locations such as Gold Saucer and Costa del Sol, but the events will likely be widely different from the original game. Worst, we could see big events like Aerith’s death and the summoning of Meteor completely rewritten or downright removed. Evangelion had the Third Impact right at the final moments of the second movie, so we could, for example, see Aerith surviving Sephiroth’s attack and the Meteor being summoned even before the group revisits Nibelheim.

Was it necessary? 

Of course, the issues faced by Evangelion will certainly be faced in Final Fantasy VII. In fact, the late events of the Remake already start doing that by throwing references to the original game, Crisis Core, and Advent Children through glimpses of scenes or by putting Zack onscreen with no background whatsoever. New players will be vastly confused by all of that senseless garbage thrown at them, while veterans will be divided into those who wish to be optimistic and think it will work by the end and those who knows this will be a permanent tarnish in the image of the franchise.

As a player, if I want to revisit an old story, especially a finished and complete one, I wish to do exactly that. My intent when I put a game named Final Fantasy VII Remake in my Playstation 4 was to see Final Fantasy VII with all its core components and tale. What I expected were small changes to make things work today and perhaps a revelation or two that could improve the experience. A rewritten tale? No thanks. If my wish was to see a new story, I would rather have Square Enix release Final Fantasy XVI or maybe a direct sequel to Final Fantasy VII at best. 

I can see players enjoying a changed ending, but this is not as simple as that. Why? Because this is no ending, this is the conclusion of the 6-hour-long introduction of the original game, which lasted for more than 40 hours in total this time. It is just the beginning and, if things are already being so dramatically changed with shitty alternate timelines, well, things are pretty much doomed.

Not only that, but the tale also rewrites deaths. Deaths that were certain, unquestionable, and whose purpose were to give the show a much needed maturity and sense of sacrifice. Losing Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie was a big blow to the party, a blow that could be a lot better explored in this game. The end result, however, is dominated by the teen-spirit of things, where no one can die for certain and there is always a comeback. Wedge and Biggs most certainly survive things, Jessie maybe, but regardless of that, the fact that the group defeated the very fate itself, it means they can be brought back at anytime with that excuse. It is silly, childish, and completely out of place in the tale of Final Fantasy VII.

Making deaths trivial stuff that could be easily reverted is a traditional element in shounen animes, were the charismatic characters never really die, they just pose a last stand and vanish for a few episodes until some ass-pulled excuse makes them come back later. Shows like Fullmetal Alchemist had similar issues when it had a few of those deaths added to its Brotherhood retelling, while the original only had real, permanent deaths. The result was a retelling that felt much less mature and much more intended for children than the young-adult targeting of the original. 

So, what I think is that we may end up seeing the next installment of the Final Fantasy VII Remake with a silly name such as Final Fantasy VII Re:done or Re:birth or whatever term the japanese love to throw in titles of light novels and Kingdom Hearts games.

I will play it hoping that it can still be good. However, after never really witnessing a japanese retcon that really added something, my hopes are pretty dim.