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Is Cloud An Ancient And Other Questions
Topic Started: Sep 15 2008, 11:13 PM (301 Views)
Osi
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I just played through this game in the last few weeks, and realizing that its a much deeper game then i thought on my previous playthroughs, i wanted to share some lingering questions with other people who seem to delve deeper into the game.

1st, is Cloud an ancient? It seems this way after i watched AC on youtube, he seems to share alot of traits that Aeris said about ancients in FF7. Obviously he can converse with the deceased, and the only other person to be able to was Aeris when she said she could hear her mother. Not only that but he also lives a similar life that most ancients live (in search of the promised land), according to Aeris in FF7. Now this sort of leads up to my next question which is....

Are humans #$%@ed. If Cloud is not an ancients and the ancients are the only people who can protect the world (according to the dream sequence at the end of Disc 1) I would be really afraid of the next time a Jenove decides to waltz onto the planet. Kinda depressing like armageddon. Makes you wonder what kind of idiot would want to kill Aeris.

Anyways, if anyone has opinions to share on these questions I'd appreciate it.
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Alantie
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Dreams the world far away
Cloud is not an Ancient, or has any blood connection to them as far as we have been told. His being able to converse with the dead is limited to two people- Aerith and Zack, both of whom were extremely close to him and with who he shared an intensly strong bond. The reason Cloud is able to see Aerith is because her consiousness continues to live on in him.

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The words “memetic legacy” are used a lot in the film…but in Advent Children, rather than focusing on memories we wanted to show that consciousness is what lives on. We took the ending of the game and expanded on that idea. Even if they’re dead, their consciousness is still with us. As for Cloud…he sees Aerith several times throughout the film. It’s not that he sees her because he feels her presence. He sees her because her consciousness…lives on inside him.

~Nomura; Distance Interview


Cloud's seeking the Promised Land is out of a desire to be reunited with Aerith. But he's not the only one who seeks the Promised Land- Shinra wanted to find it, and Sephiroth too talks about wanting to be able to find it. What the original game says is that the Ancients were the ones who were able to find it and lead others there.

Also, I believe that AC demonstrates that the world is not doomed because there are no more living Ancients. Aerith continues to look after the Planet as it's protector and sends her holy rain to cleanse those aflicted by Geostigma. It's her duty as the last Cetra; she's clearly still able to influence the world even in death. And there are also people like Cloud and the rest of his friends who protect the Planet as well.

I hope this helps answers your questions.
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Anastar
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To touch the light I see in your eyes...
Hi, Osi, and welcome to the forum! ^_^ You ask some interesting questions...

Osi
 
1st, is Cloud an ancient?  It seems this way after i watched AC on youtube, he seems to share alot of traits that Aeris said about ancients in FF7.  Obviously he can converse with the deceased, and the only other person to be able to was Aeris when she said she could hear her mother.

Actually, Cloud's not the only one who can hear voices of the dead. If you remember, in Advent Children, some of the children were also able to hear Aerith. For example, near the end of Advent Children, after Cloud wakes up in the pool of water outside the church, a little girl says to him:

Girl: It's like she said: Wait here and Cloud will come back.

Afterwards, we see Aerith kneeling next to some children and talking to them inside the door to the Church (in fact, that scene's in my sig). However, it does seem that Cloud's the only *adult* who's able to hear Aerith in the movie.

There's no scene of Cloud talking with Zack, so we're not sure that he's able to talk with Zack's spirit. Some people believe that Cloud was able to see Zack in the doorway thanks to Aerith, since Cloud needed further reassurance that he wasn't to blame for Zack's death. Plus, we don't see Zack in Calling, so Zack apparantly rejoined the Lifestream after walking into the light.

However, the best explanation for why Cloud's able to talk with Aerith is given to us in the Distance interview on the second disk included with AC. In that interviewer, Tetusya Nomura says this:

The words “memetic legacy” are used a lot in the film…but in Advent Children, rather than focusing on memories we wanted to show that consciousness is what lives on. We took the ending of the game and expanded on that idea. Even if they’re dead, their consciousness is still with us. As for Cloud…he sees Aerith several times throughout the film. It’s not that he sees her because he feels her presence. He sees her because her consciousness…lives on inside him.

Nomura says that Aerith's consciousness lives on inside of Cloud. Theoretically, this would be possible because Cloud was infused with high levels of Mako while Hojo experimented on him at Nibelheim. Mako, of course, is the Lifestream. Since Aerith is a spirit who resides in the Lifestream, and Cloud has high levels of Lifestream within his body, then it's possible for her consciousness to live on inside of him.

It is also possible that this bond is enhanced by Cloud and Aerith's love for one another. Dyne, for example, heard the voice of his wife Eleanor's spirit talking to him in FFVII while he was still alive, and he was very much in love with her. It's arguable that Dyne was mentally insane and just hearing things when he heard his dead wife's voice, but their spirits were also shown to reunite after Dyne's death in the novella "Maiden of the Planet".

You'll find some further discussion of these things along with related topics in this thread: Japnese Translation of FFVII

Osi
 
Not only that but he also lives a similar life that most ancients live (in search of the promised land), according to Aeris in FF7.  Now this sort of leads up to my next question which is....

Well, at the end of FFVII, Cloud says that he thinks he can meet Aerith in the Promised Land. So, as he stated it, his intention to search for the Promised Land was in order to find Aerith. We've had some discussions on whether he actually searched for it - he was shown in other games searching for the Promised Land (FF Tactics), as well as for Aerith (Kingdom Hearts I).

Although it was never *specified* that Cloud searched for her between FFVII and AC, it's quite possible that he went to visit her Church in order to find her (since it's never revealed when he first visited the Church), or that he searched while travelling for the delivery service.

Osi
 
Are humans #$%@ed.  If Cloud is not an ancients and the ancients are the only people who can protect the world (according to the dream sequence at the end of Disc 1) I would be really afraid of the next time a Jenove decides to waltz onto the planet.  Kinda depressing like armageddon.  Makes you wonder what kind of idiot would want to kill Aeris.

The idiot who killed Aerith wanted Jenova to take over the Planet! :P

At any rate, it's my own theory that that's the whole reason Aerith resurrected Cloud. Although she's dead, her spirit has essentially been "assigned" the role of protecting the future of the Planet, since she was caster of Holy. It was shown that the consciousness of Cetra can survive for hundreds of years. In FFVII, Bugenhagen heard the consciousness of Cetra speaking to him in the Forgotten City. In FFVII, Aerith heard the consciousness of individual Cetra spirits speaking to her when she arrived at the Temple of the Ancients. Those spirits had been protecting the black materia for hundreds of years, and actually told Aerith that they had prevented their return to the Planet by the force of their will.

Therefore, when Cetra are given a "duty" of that sort, it seems that they are able to maintain their consciousness for lengthy periods of time. Wouldn't Aerith inherit the responsibility of continuing to protect the Planet as the last Cetra and summoner of Holy?

So why would Aerith resurrect Cloud for this reason? Well, if you think about it, Cloud always defeats the physical manifestations of Jenova/Sephiroth, while Aerith defeats them on a magical and spiritual level. I think the *combination* of their strengths is needed to protect the Planet from Jenova/Sephiroth.

Many people believe that she resurrected him in AC simply so that he could live a life without guilt. That may indeed be part of the reason, but I would also suspect that she also had the protection of the Planet in mind. ;)

Again, I spoke about this theory in more detail on page 2 of this thread: Japnese Translation of FFVII.

EDIT: I see that Alantie posted while I was posting, and I agree with her that Cloud was never stated to be an Ancient. Aerith was said to be the last surviving Ancient in FFVII, and there's no evidence that either of Cloud's parents were Cetra.
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Alantie
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Dreams the world far away
:lmao: I didn't realize that we posted at about the same time, Aly! :lol: You did a much more indepth post of things though, so I really appreciate that!

Aly
 
I agree with her that Cloud was never stated to be an Ancient. Aerith was said to be the last surviving Ancient in FFVII, and there's no evidence that either of Cloud's parents were Cetra.


Very true. While we're given quite a bit of Aerith being aware of her Cetra abilities as a child and developing her abilities as she grows from Emyra's conversation with Cloud, Barret, and Tifa, Cloud never exhibits being able to hear the voice of the Planet or interact with spirits in the Lifestream at all. Nor does any of his telling of his childhood touch upon it at all. If Cloud were a Cetra, it would make sense that he would have had similar experiances as Aerith did.
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Aerife
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I have a quick question: If the Cetra's spirit can live for hundreds of years, and Aerith was a Cetra, what happens to their spirits when that time elapses?

EDIT: Well after reading some of the proofs in the Devotion site, I think I got my answer. The spirits return to the planet, don't they? But I'm still confused. If they return to the planet, does that mean they will no longer be able to roam around in the living world? :unsure:
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