[This post was intended for the FFshrine forums, but because they never confirmed my registration I post it here. If any theories I address have been talked about and solved already I apologize]
Warning: This post is
enormous. Five pages on Microsoft Word. Put some time aside. =)
I’ve watched Advent Children 3 times now. Anyways I found a number of things in the movie which I did not entirely understand and I’m willing to debate over theories behind the answers. Being FF7, the developers have decided to make things not entirely clear, which I don’t mind at all. It makes things much more interesting as we try to determine what actually happened, and the way it is presented doesn’t irritate, it makes me more thoughtful. With a few exceptions. Anyways, here goes.
1.
Aeris’ role in the movie- Throughout AC, Aeris saves Cloud’s ass a number of times and also talks with him on a couple of occasions about his thoughts. A particularly memorable part where she just talks to him about his feelings would be when Cloud is riding his motorcycle to rescue the orphans at the Forgotten City. She addresses Cloud’s plea for forgiveness and helps him understand what it is exactly that he is so uncertain and guilty about. She also helps Cloud out many times throughout the movie, saving him from certain death quite a few times.
- When Cloud plunges into Bahamut’s plasma ball she helps him through.
- When Kadaj is about to blast Cloud to smithereens in the church Aeris summons her raincloud of anti-Jenova cells and scares him off. This also heals Cloud of the Geostigma.
- When Cloud begins his battle with Sephiroth, something Marlene says as the storm gathers brings up flashes of Aeris and I believe Aeris tries to help Cloud out in some way in that battle.
- Aeris helps guide Kadaj into the Lifestream by posing as his “mother” (Jenova) and then she proceeds to heal a whole lot of people with her anti-Jenova rain.
- When Cloud is killed or really messed up by Yazoo and Loz’s sacrificial explosion, Aeris resurrects him through the children.
Now my question about Aeris’ role in the movie is this: how can Aeris help Cloud? Aeris dies in the game and as far as I can remember does not help Cloud after she is gone. After all, she no longer exists within the game. Cloud is very upset by her death and believes he could have done more, but this is Aeris’ memory having an effect, not Aeris herself. It seems rather strange that after having gone through so much in the game, if Aeris was capable of helping Cloud as some sort of spirit, then why didn’t she? The way I see it is that Aeris is an Ancient, and thus has powers far beyond that of a normal human being in the FF7 world. Thus she is able to operate as a spirit in the movie by utilizing her powers. But then this brings up the question of what is a spirit in the FF7 world? We discover that in the game, Sephiroth is killed by Cloud very early in the game, but his extraordinary willpower allows him to ‘live on’ as a spirit and influence the game using powers of the mind. Sephiroth’s power is based on the mind and the fact that he was a very powerful badass before he physically died. For more details on that, I examined this essay all about Sephiroth
http://www.ffshrine.org/ff7/ff7_theory_sephiroth.php
Sephiroth was able to use his immense willpower to “move around mentally in a physical state he fashioned for himself to retrieve the Black Materia and summon Meteor”. Now if Aeris is a spirit, then she should operate by the same rules, but in the movie Aeris does not take physical form to influence the course of events. Actually, I suppose she does become a rainstorm of sorts, but that’s a pretty pathetic physical manifestation if that even classifies as one. Aeris mainly utilizes visions or dreams that she sends to Cloud and helps add to Cloud’s willpower or address mental dilemmas that Cloud has throughout the movie. She is basically a voice in his head. And a rainstorm.
But then again maybe the rainstorm is a way that the world addresses the problem of Geostigma and Jenova’s cells within the Lifestream. As said here,
http://www.ffshrine.org/ff7/ff7_theory_lifestream.php, Lifestream is the blood of the planet and rushes to heal any wounds the planet takes. The rainstorm could have been the world’s way of addressing and defeating the problem of the Geostigma. But then again, throughout the movie the raincloud is associated with Aeris in that it appears in her grove of flowers at the church and appears along with Aeris’ voice when she talks Kadaj into joining the Lifestream. Who knows? So to finalize this section:
Is Aeris a spirit? What is a spirit within the FF7 world? If she is a spirit, why isn’t she like Sephiroth’s spirit? Is the raincloud Aeris or the planet healing a wound?