Goddamn, man… you’ve been fucking COOKING on these videos lately. This might be my favorite of the bunch as I personally love digging into the nuance of exploring conflicting feelings about art. I don’t have anything particularly additive to contribute, but I really agree with all these points.

Actually, one such example of my conflict is this: on the one hand, I never felt like Shinra was about to nab us especially in Junon. There are excuses: Roche invites us to the upper plate, Rufus is aware of us, etc… but it felt odd walking amongst Shinra troopers while out of disguise on the way up to Upper Junon. But I so thoroughly love once we got in disguise and had our adventures with the 7th Infantry that I simply DID NOT CARE 😂 I was just enjoying it all too much.

People who argue that Aerith isn’t serious just makes me think that the person making it is arguing in bad faith.

She’s someone who spent half her life in a lab and the other half in the slums. Naturally, she’d get excited about every new place she visits. The girl has never seen the ocean, never flown on a plane, and never been to a theme park. All Aerith has ever known are laboratory equipment and filthy cities. Suddenly, she finds herself in a vast, vibrant world How exactly did people expect her to act?

I feel a big problem is that a lot of people just forgot how to have fun. Final Fantasy 7 is a VIDEO GAME, a fictional piece of media where characters can do what they want and be whatever they want to be. The original had many serious moments, but it was also super goofy at times, because comic relief is a great part of good writing, especially in more mature plots like this one. How did this get lost in translation?

I totally agree with you. There's a few things that I could do without in the remake series, but for the most part, I think it's just a masterpiece in my own eyes.

The argument isn’t that the anime style is cringe. The argument is that the anime style 1) does not match the direction of realistic graphics 2) is parasitic inside serious scenes.

Notice that most anime when doing hyperbole do away with realism, usually using chibi interludes or abstract imagery. Full Metal Alchemist for example, maintains a serious tone, but when wanting to joke, art style changes, backgrounds change, and there are symbols present. Cactuar poses and goblin dialogue would work in OG because it had chibi graphics. Here it is cringe, because it tries to be realistic at the same time.

“Anime style” (for lack of a better term) is inherently the opposite of realistic, it involves unrealistic motion and exaggerated expressions. This cannot be done correctly with realistic 3D graphics. So, every time they get into that direction it doesn’t work. It didn’t work in FF10-2, it didn’t work in FF13 and it doesn’t work here, yet the Hamaguchi/Toriyama duo insist on doing it.

The second problem is understanding when the tone changes are working for or against the current scene. Retrilogy suffers from a need to joke constantly, even during scenes that should allow themselves to resolve with the depth they started with. Most of Barret scenes are interrupted by jokes.

People need to understand that it isn’t style or tone in a vacuum some of us have a problem with, but the context in which it is used as well as the aesthetic mismatch.

Want anime? Do anime art style, go for a Persona art direction and same scenes would not be a problem and would work. Want jokes, don’t interrupt serious scenes with them constantly.

The OG was goofy and we understood that part of FF7 perfectly. It isn’t about content, it is about improper delivery of it.

I agree that they've changed the tone of individual scenes, but when it comes to the overall tone of the games themselves...yeah I think the remakes genuinely are pretty consistant with the tone of the OG. Yes there are more silly scenes in the new games that weren't in the original, but there are also plenty of added serious scenes that also weren't in the original to balance things out. FFVII was always very anime in my opinion and was constantly switching between serious and silly practically on a moment's notice. This is actually an aspect of FFVII that I felt didn't come through as clearly in later FFVII works like Advent Children, so I was VERY happy to see that Remake and Rebirth weren't afraid to just be silly, and have fun. In my opinion, the only reason the original wasn't as expressive and zany as the remakes is because the OG was limited by the technology of the time. The characters can only express themselves so much when they're a bunch of tiny chibi models with static faces and no voices, and we were left to fill in a lot of the blanks, allowing us to create our own more subjective interpretations of what these characters, and this world were actually like. Now modern technology allows the developers to bring these characters and this world to life more than ever before, and they're taking advantage of that. Had the OG been made with the technology available today, it may not have been EXACTLY like Remake and Rebirth are now, but I don't think it would be that far off either.

This video gonna rustle some Jimmies 😂
Like and GWARK! In the comment section to spread the rustling further 🥸

Yuffie is best girl. Fun fact; Yuffie is in MORE Final Fantasy 7 content than any other character.

People accuse remake of making Cloud too serious, but in the OG, Cloud did not loosen up until AFTER the Kalm flashback. During the entirety of midgar, Cloud was trying to play up the "hardcore stoic professional" and while crazy shenanigans was happening around him, he tried to play it straight, regardless of the situation.

Somehow I always see your videos within seconds of uploading, it’s happened 5-10 times in a row. We must be in sync Pezzy Boy! Gwark and thank you for the videos.

You know, I think you're onto something and I wanted to add something. I remember when people used to complain about things being too edgy, now they're complaining about things being too whimsical. It's almost as if their previous complaints influenced the creators of the media they were complaining about. Huh.

You make a very good point that childish and childlike aren't the same thing. I would still argue though that FF7 Remake doesn't do enough with a "childlike" tone to constitute a great achievement. Children love life not just because they are exuberant but because they want to discover new things in life. FF7 Remake capitalizes on the exuberance of being childlike but doesn't fulfil the curiosity side of the bargain. The open world is transformed into a checklist, and that becomes not just a gameplay issue, but a tonal issue - the sense of mystery, or childlike curiosity is lacking. We see one side of being childlike, the emotional side, but not the mechanics of how that works, i.e. curiosity and adoration for new things, and so the "childlike" quality of the game becomes a bit one-dimensional.

I agree with you that comic relief in any dark and serious video game is vitally important, absolutely. I'd question the idea though that Seven Remakes provides that in a genuinely effective way. You bring up the High Wind scene as an example of good tonal contrast, and I agree with you - I liked Aerith imitating Yuffie, it nearly made me shit my pants laughing. But I'm not convinced that that standard is kept up all the way through the game. A lot of tonal relief comes in the form of characters just expressing merriment - Gold Saucer, Red XIII moonwalking, and the general touristy atmosphere of the game, but that merriment just doesn't make me laugh. We see the end result of joviality, but I don't see the mechanism that makes the audience jovial along with the cast - other than at Andrea Rhodea's, there isn't much use of genuine awkwardness, irony, farce or a lot of other comic devices, and the depressing scenes beforehand often aren't pronounced enough to make us truly empathize with how a character is now happy. Cloud is constantly interrupted by Sephiroth in his head, to the point that we struggle to empathize with Cloud's shitty mental state because we are constantly reminded of it. Tifa's tragic backstory is handled well, but a less tragic and more action-move orientated Sector 7 plate collapse, and the general pacing issues of the game drowning out her trauma don't help. The black isn't there to contrast well with the white, and the white isn't developed enough.

You raise an interesting point that the mechanics of the planet are developed more in Rebirth. For me though, the quality of that development reeks of telling and not showing. We are told more about what the planet is, and we here about the backstory of the Gi and the Black Materia, and the ecology/moral universe of the game in general, and that is all very interesting, but what the devs don't manage to do is tell us that expanded universe through the story in action. To use a really outdated example but I think one that still works, take King Lear - we learn the moral universe of the play through the machinations of Goneril, Reagan and Edmund, the failures of Lear and Gloucester, and how Cordelia, Edgar and Kent respond to everything - we are shown the moral universe simultaneously with  the plot moving forward, rather than in some long exposition about the history of the planet.

The game does many things well. Aerith, for example, is a great character in Rebirth, and you can really feel a true childlike atttude in here. The game as a whole though is another matter.

I love the goofiness of FFVII Re-trilogy. Very refreshing and self-assured compared to the must-be-dark-to-be-adult mode of a lot of western media. I also feel that when peeps have been through hardship, you appreciate that there's humour and joy and grace even during those times. The lighter moments also make the darker moments more shocking. For example, Hojo creeping on Aerith in his lab while telling her the perfection of her mother's dissected cells was one of the most chilling things I've seen.

FF7 has always been anime. JRPGs as a whole have always been anime. But I think EVERYTHING has been amped up in the R trilogy. The combat is more over the top.The characters, world, music, visuals, everything is brought up to 11. That might be too much for some people in some places, but it is still overall in the spirit of FF7. AC was so lacking in like levity that I think people associate OG with that, but OG was goofy. Wall market was still there, GS was still there, Palmer gets hit by a truck, you go snowboarding after tragic events. A lot of the failing in AC as a sequel is just being almost entirely serious and sad. It reflects Cloud's mental state at the time of course, but it paints a picture of these characters and world as being just grey and sad and serious. If the Remake trilogy had the tone of AC it would have been a depressing slog of a series.

I think part of the failing of 16 too was this complete lack of levity. FF7 being dark and grim all the time isn't FF7. Rebirth was a bit of a vacation around the world, but for the most part, it is kind of just a tour around the world at this point of the story. Other than the Turks being after them and trying to find Sephiroth, there's no like urgent plot in this part of the FF7 story. When the story isn't meant to be happy, it isn't. The final chapters, the temple, the scene with Dyne, Red's Cosmo section leading to his dad, the village of the Gi, like the characters aren't having a party in these sections. Much like real life. There are good times, there are bad times. At times the R trilogy makes these happen back to back a little too quickly after one another, but overall, the issue isn't that there are bright spots. I don't think FF7 OG would have been as fondly looked back on, or as wildly successful at the time, if it didn't have bright spots, and wasn't a little silly.

I have to challenge the notion that both Kalm and Nibelheim should have felt tonally suffocating, for reasons that you yourself list in this video. Both are instances of a Shinra cover-up, and the Shinra employees working there have been method acting for years. The anxiety comes from the fact that they are so touristy/out of touch with what's going on, because either the characters or the players know that they should be vastly different, if they should even exist at all. I'm not going to pretend that some of it (side quests, et cetera) didn't feel gamified by virtue of it being a video game, but walking through both Kalm and Nibelheim in Rebirth was nothing short of unsettling for me if for no other reason than I knew exactly what happened there and there was zero reflection of it in anything I was seeing. They honestly might be some of my favorite additions thus far, and I dare say that basing your expectations of the representation of those places on what you felt going through them in OG (or what you felt going through in subsequent runs with expanded knowledge) is exactly the same kind of nostalgia trap that you've been highlighting with this whole video series.

This notion that a playful tone means a story is immature is absolutely ridiculous. Just look at something like ATLA: Aang is a goofy dork but the series is constantly switching between serious and goofy. This notion that the 7R is somehow worse for unapologetically shifting its tone back and forth is BS.

I think this debate more often than not doesnt see the whole picture.

The atmosphere undeniably changed, I would also add that Retrilogy has more prosperous and technologically advanced (VR for example) setting. It doesn’t help the level of censorship they had to add for age rating purposes.

On the other hand, its also worth mentioning that Retrilogy also added new deep and dark content - all the extra content on ancient temple, Cloud being the most dark and violent version of himself at several times, going back to Corel after Dyne…

The character designs of og are even more anime like and colorful, besides being chibi which would be considered inherently more childish if it wasn’t nostalgia. The og indeed have more goofy moments than people like to admit, the play at Gold Soucer is way more infantile than what we got with Loveless on Rebirth. Why people dont recognize that?

It bothers me that adding fun and parties supposedly makes anything more childish when thats part of the alienation that the game wants to criticize. We live in a world with parties, cruises, huge events and that doesn’t deny the amount of terrible stuff that also happens. Retrilogy still tackles poverty, inequality, human/animal experiments, sex traffic, environmental crisis, etc

People act as if they turned Berserk into Dora the Adventurer when what we got is close to what happened to HunterxHunter when the remake looks more colorful, has its goofy anime moments, but they still kept most of what made the anime heavy.

Okay but the two ladies in Kalm smacking each other eternally gives me such a chuckle when I think about it.

"Side questing is always ridiculous" No! It doesn't have to be! What you're talking about are closer to "side tasks". Things to keep you busy for no other reason than to fill the world with activity of some sort. Yeah, a few side tasks here and there are never much of a problem, but they should feel like little bonuses to help smooth out the pacing for you. The whole Yuffie in Wutai part of the original game is a real side quest! It's optional content that fits right into the game. Or locations that naturally expand your understanding of the world, its history or the characters - without feeling forced in there like some MMO quest; and while you're at it, you can give some actually great rewards instead of being scared that people miss stuff. I'd be happier if games trusted the curiosity of a player more, like they used to.

I don't think there's anything wrong with whimsy. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of the compilation, I have always had a soft spot for Crisis Core. I like the game, I like Zack's character, I like his upbeat energy and it totally pulls the game together for me (just the same as I appreciate Tidus). But whimsy being good sometimes doesn't mean it's good all the time or should be the default, and I really do feel it was overdone in Remake/Rebirth. I actually think a lot (there are surely exceptions) of stories with serious and depressive tones should have nicely marked out sections to shine light and indulge in whimsy. One of the great moments to do that in FF7 is of course at the Gold Saucer, or in Wall Market. And there are plenty of teen anime that understand and execute this properly.

I don't think negative opinions of the games are immaturity, personally. They're just opinion and preference and people like to convey them. Are there some immature people with the same opinions? Of course. Are there some immature people with the opposing opinion? Naturally! There being immature people on one side or another doesn't automatically negate what's being said. In the end, it comes down to a clash of preferences, and that means some people just love to sling shit at each other personally, instead of actually discussing the ideas (though some people do both at the same time, which gets extra dirty). But I'll concede that it's sometimes hard to indulge in positivity in the face of overwhelming glazing, and hard to indulge in negativity in the face of overwhelming mockery. I'm enjoying your small concessions and it's why I am watching you over Sebby (besides having watched you since the FF15 days); his concessions are too brief and too sidelined for me to stick around.

If you enjoy an anime mixture of whimsy and seriousness, please play Tales of the Abyss!

I'm with you with the whole realism bit. It doesn't need to be ultra-realistic and predictable. The original game wasn't, either. It just has to be artistically and spiritually equivalent to the original (as a Remake), and it isn't that for me; if you took out the Sequel-y nature, I'd probably be less critical. I also think you are right that there are merits to this style and the way it does things (I can enjoy them in other games as mentioned above), and I do believe it can be enjoyed as it is if you relinquish some of that disappointment while you play, but remember what you said in one of your other videos: Getting a disappointing Final Fantasy means you're going to wait a decade to roll again. And as such, getting this style of remake trilogy means that we will likely never receive the style that many of us did actually want. That is what happened with FF15 for me, and it's what is happening with FF7R. Both are disappointments in their own ways, but both could still be enjoyed, too (the whole thread of camp scenes leading up to the final camp in FF15 is always going to be a golden moment for me). So as much as you compartmentalise, the disappointment will always be real.

In the end, you can sum up my feelings in the following way: I like gritty and serious, even depressive (hey, I did grow up watching the likes of Ergo Proxy and Serial Experiments Lain, and of course Berserk). I also like light-hearted and whimsical (I also grew up watching Naruto and Bleach). Ideally, a great story can weave its way through moments that incorporate both to varying degrees. Both OG and Remake do this, but the weaved patterns are different. The textures are different. The balance is different. And I simply don't think FF7 is improved because of it.
Overall, I do probably tend to gravitate more towards the gritty serious side, and maybe that is thanks to experiencing FF7 as a child. Japan was very good at it in the 90s and early 2000s, and it feels like something of a lost art these days.

PS. There was one thing in this video that I really do think was a great point: having to be pushed into (potential) embarrassment to unwind the character within. I like that point a lot, and it existed in OG with Wall Market as well. And I believe it's part of what made Cloud open up about the past once they reached Kalm (other than general battle camaraderie) . So I can see it being a compelling argument in favour of the expansion of thawing Cloud's ice in Remake.

There are some good points here but my issue with the remake trilogy isn't the tone and silliness in general, you can make a very good game like that, it was just that it is being applied to this specific story, a very dark and trauma heavy story.

To use an anime metaphor like in the vid, it would be like if i heard they were making a remake of fullmetal alchemist, one of my favourite anime from back early in my anime watching days, but that they were rewriting much of the story and world building and changing its tone to be closer to something like beyblade, or welcome to demon school iruma-kun. I have nothing against beyblade and actually really enjoy iruma-kun, but it would be a terrible fit for an anime like fullmetal. Sure there are points of absurdity and childish humour in fma, but those are the exception, not the rule.

Pez!!! The algorithm hasn’t shown me one of your videos in years! No idea what happened - I used to be hooked on your videos. Big ol’ backlog waiting for me now 😂