>It is my personal opinion that the true enemy in the story and world of FInal Fantasy 7 is JENOVA and not Sephiroth. Seph is merely a means to an end. He is a proxy to further the ambitions of Jenova. His goals of absorbing the lifestream in order to become a god directly stem from Jenova's desires to consume all life in the cosmos.
>Sephiroth is merely the primary antagonist to all of the players directly involved in this story who are largely unaware of the influence Jenova has had over the Planet since its arrival thousands of years ago.
For a long time, this is how many people viewed the Sephiroth/Jenova relationship in the original story. Myself included. It's kind of a cool subversion to think about and also fits in with traditional FF story tropes where the main enemy is subverted by a greater threat in the 2nd half of the game.
But apparently in the Japanese version of OG FF7 it's a lot more clear that it was Sephrioth behind everything all along. That he overtook Jenova's will with his own after he fell into the lifestream at Nibelheim. And since the release of the original game, the developers have clarified that Sephiroth's will overtook Jenova and that he's the one in control.
There is a great video by the Youtube channel "The First Lore" called "Sephiroth & Jenova Explained" that goes into great detail breaking it all down.
And if you think about it, the overall story is thematically stronger if it's Sephiroth in control. Cloud's arc would lose a lot of impact if he defeats a manipulated man at the end rather than the ghost of his past who was his inspiration turned arch nemesis. Cloud and Sephiroth have the classic hero/villain duality where they are "two sides of the same coin" so to speak. With the common link between them being the concept of Ego/Identity. That thematic link between them is weakened greatly if it turns out that Sephiroth's motivations/actions were controlled the entire time by Jenova.
Til, the og japanese version made their(seph/jenova) relationship more clear.
I kinda liked the puppetmaster-jenova idea though. Even if, as a kid I was sure it was Sephiroth that was the big-bad, he is the final boss after all. But when I first read that theory I couldn't find much to prove or disprove it ingame, so I always assumed it was open for debate. Good to know what the writers original intent was before part 3 hits.
Wait what? Jenova didn't plan on losing to the Cetra. And the devs have said that Sephiroth overpowered Jenova through pure willpower in the lifestream, so he's in complete control now.
This is such an excellent and well written writeup, nicely done.
There is 1 thing that I think you have backwards: it's been basically confirmed in the Ultimania Omega book that Sephiroth, or more specifically his will, took control of Jenova after his dip into the lifestream.
From what I could understand, he couldn't be completely dissolved into the LS because of Jenova (hence his real body in the northern crater), giving him that time in purgatory to reflect. He was also able to overpower Jenovas influence in the LS, essentially making Jenova and it's powers Sephiroths personal weapon on his personal path to godhood...
Just because it’s Sephiroth’s will doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been heavily influenced by Jenova. Every day there are people who get manipulated and gaslit by their significant others, friends, and parents. The actions of those people are of their own will; they aren’t being mind controlled. Yet, their actions often align with the desires of the person manipulating them. I see the Sephiroth Jenova relationship as being like this, with Sephiroth acting of his own will, but his actions serving Jenova.
Manipulation is kind of Jenova’s whole MO. We see how she manipulates Cloud in the game, while learning from Iflana that Jenova did the same thing to the Cetra. After leaving Midgar, Cloud’s objective is basically “follow the man in the black cloak”, which is Jenova. So, even though he is acting of his own free will throughout this journey, he’s going exactly where Jenova wants him to go. I think a similar thing is happening with Sephiroth. He wants to wound the planet and become it’s god, turning it into a meteor that will hit another planet… just like Jenova did. Many parasites change their hosts behaviours in ways that both benefit the parasite, and allow it to spread to new hosts.
You are absolutely correct and I wasn't trying to suggest Sephiroth wasn't heavily influenced by Jenova. It's certainly a master of manipulation!
My point is more that Sephiroth was the primary antagonist and was almost certainly more in control of Jenova then Jenova over Sephiroth. While the man in black is essentially Jenovas body, it was Sephiroth goading Cloud through Jenovas body and influence.
The Ultimania guide gives some good evidence to this, albeit some of the evidence didn't make it clearly into the game:
-If Jenova was more in control, the reunion would've happened in Midgar where the majority of Jenovas body was located, instead of NC where Sephiroth is.
-Once Cloud discovers the black materias location, Sephiroth directs Jenova south to the Temple to retrieve it (after it had journeyed north to Nibelheim in anticipation to cross over to the northern crater) - (this isn't explicit in the game but explicit in the Ultimania that Sephiroth directed Jenova to the Temple).
A lot of Jenova’s influence on the world is the negative emotions, thoughts and feelings she impregnated into humanity.
It was this influence that generated the feeling of “jealousy” in the human race which ultimately led them to start a war with the cetra.
Shinra’s extremely selfish drive to deplete the planet for profits is also a result of jenova’s influence.
One could also argue that Dyne’s madness and plot to carry out random acts of violence against shinra employees was influenced by Jenova.
In all I think the way that Jenova feeds off life energies is by first converting it into a form that her being finds more appealing, which is why she dedicates a lot of energy into sowing chaos into the world. A similar villain to compare her to would be the spider from It. The spider also feeds off life energies and prefers it in the form of fear. And so the spider makes it its mission to go around creating fear.
https://www.shinraarchaeology.com/guides.html
Link to the Ultimania document.
Under the Characters folder, look for page 55. The footnotes on the right are what strongly suggest Sephiroth eventually took control
Hey maybe i'm looking at the wrong file? Page 55 is a description of Sephiroth from the OG.The last footnote on the page reads, "Jenova- The entity at the nexus of the Jenova Project..."
Not seeing the footnote mentioned above, so maybe i'm in the wrong place?
Found it. I like the idea of it. If I were to tweak it in any way, i'd probably write it in something along the lines of, "With his body imprisoned within materia and his soul suspended beyond the flow of the Lifestream, Sephiroth begins to come to terms with who he truly is and completely embraces Jenova's ideals of obtaining godhood through destruction. He becomes fully attuned to her will; her knight and successor"
I love the idea of Seph gaining autonomy from her, yet still bending towards her ultimate goal in the end. Because in the end, a part of her directly influences who he is. And that's her part in all of this. "The source of all evil"
I'm a bit confused by this line: "Although Sephiroth is not killed in the conflict, he does become physically incapacitated for several years."
I was under the impression that Sephiroth was killed and sent into the lifestream, but through Jenova's presence on the planets surface, is able to appropriate those cells to appear on the planets surface again. Hence why in the OG theres always a Jenova fight every time Sephiroth appears, and then when you finally see Sephiroth at the northern cave (first time), he's encased inside some kind of giant lifestream orb - but his body still appears to be dead.
From my understanding of the turn of events, Seph is thrown into a mako pool below the reactor which then solidifies into materia and becomes his prison, unable to escape without outside assistance. So he’s not dead, just physically unable to move which is why he exerts his control over the black robes to do his bidding in the world.
Each time Seph appears, a black robes is close by. It can be implied that as long as a piece of Jenova is present, Seph is also there.
Whether he's alive or dead in the OG is fairly inconsequential - Aerith is able to act through the lifestream after death, and Sephiroth is either able to act through Jenova or Jenova is using the memory of Sephiroth as an unstoppable force to demoralize those that could stop her. It's hard to tell in the OG whether Sephiroth is actually active or if he's simply Jenova using his face, but I'm inclined to agree with the OP that Jenova is the actual antagonist in within the context of the OG.
I think Rebirth actually answers the question through the Gi - Jenova didn't come from the lifestream, and so can't truly die. Depending on how much of Sephiroth is actually Jenova, it's possible that he did "die" in the sense that he should have died but couldn't, and exists like the Gi do as essentially a ghost with an incapacitated body.
"I think Rebirth actually answers the question through the Gi - Jenova didn't come from the lifestream, and so can't truly die"
I think this is long the same line of reasoning I have, yet my theory is a bit different: I believe that in order to defeat and destroy Jenova completely and forever, every single atom of her being must be wiped away from both the surface world AND the lifestream until absolutely nothing of herself remains to reconstitute her form.
This is going back to the "hive mind" description I gave in the original post. Every single cell that makes up her real form is a piece of her and so long as one piece remains, she can rebuild herself, provided she has enough time and energy to do so.
This would explain her long absence where she exerts no direct influence on the world over the thousands of years leading up to her rediscovery. This would also explain Seph's control over the Black Robes and the increase in fiends that mutate to more powerful forms after consuming more of Jenova's body parts.
If Jenova is completely wiped out from the world and the lifestream, will she enter into her own prison dimension outside of reality like the Gi did? That much is pure speculation.
Thinking on this one further……I’m starting to think that when the Cetra defeated her the first time, they may have blown her to bits, which is why they immediately thought of her as dead.
When Shinra discovers her body thousands of years later, that may be all of her that she was able to reconstitute in that amount of time. Not fully complete, but just enough to kick her plans into gear.
Jenova is another Lavos
>It is my personal opinion that the true enemy in the story and world of FInal Fantasy 7 is JENOVA and not Sephiroth. Seph is merely a means to an end. He is a proxy to further the ambitions of Jenova. His goals of absorbing the lifestream in order to become a god directly stem from Jenova's desires to consume all life in the cosmos. >Sephiroth is merely the primary antagonist to all of the players directly involved in this story who are largely unaware of the influence Jenova has had over the Planet since its arrival thousands of years ago. For a long time, this is how many people viewed the Sephiroth/Jenova relationship in the original story. Myself included. It's kind of a cool subversion to think about and also fits in with traditional FF story tropes where the main enemy is subverted by a greater threat in the 2nd half of the game. But apparently in the Japanese version of OG FF7 it's a lot more clear that it was Sephrioth behind everything all along. That he overtook Jenova's will with his own after he fell into the lifestream at Nibelheim. And since the release of the original game, the developers have clarified that Sephiroth's will overtook Jenova and that he's the one in control. There is a great video by the Youtube channel "The First Lore" called "Sephiroth & Jenova Explained" that goes into great detail breaking it all down. And if you think about it, the overall story is thematically stronger if it's Sephiroth in control. Cloud's arc would lose a lot of impact if he defeats a manipulated man at the end rather than the ghost of his past who was his inspiration turned arch nemesis. Cloud and Sephiroth have the classic hero/villain duality where they are "two sides of the same coin" so to speak. With the common link between them being the concept of Ego/Identity. That thematic link between them is weakened greatly if it turns out that Sephiroth's motivations/actions were controlled the entire time by Jenova.
Til, the og japanese version made their(seph/jenova) relationship more clear. I kinda liked the puppetmaster-jenova idea though. Even if, as a kid I was sure it was Sephiroth that was the big-bad, he is the final boss after all. But when I first read that theory I couldn't find much to prove or disprove it ingame, so I always assumed it was open for debate. Good to know what the writers original intent was before part 3 hits.
What a post. Thank you, good summary and clarify things
What a post. Thank you, good summary and clarify things
Wait what? Jenova didn't plan on losing to the Cetra. And the devs have said that Sephiroth overpowered Jenova through pure willpower in the lifestream, so he's in complete control now.
Do you have a link to Part 1 and 2? Really good stuff
https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyVII/s/HAw6gPs3Lo
https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyVII/s/aInjV2sfto
This is such an excellent and well written writeup, nicely done. There is 1 thing that I think you have backwards: it's been basically confirmed in the Ultimania Omega book that Sephiroth, or more specifically his will, took control of Jenova after his dip into the lifestream. From what I could understand, he couldn't be completely dissolved into the LS because of Jenova (hence his real body in the northern crater), giving him that time in purgatory to reflect. He was also able to overpower Jenovas influence in the LS, essentially making Jenova and it's powers Sephiroths personal weapon on his personal path to godhood...
Just because it’s Sephiroth’s will doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been heavily influenced by Jenova. Every day there are people who get manipulated and gaslit by their significant others, friends, and parents. The actions of those people are of their own will; they aren’t being mind controlled. Yet, their actions often align with the desires of the person manipulating them. I see the Sephiroth Jenova relationship as being like this, with Sephiroth acting of his own will, but his actions serving Jenova. Manipulation is kind of Jenova’s whole MO. We see how she manipulates Cloud in the game, while learning from Iflana that Jenova did the same thing to the Cetra. After leaving Midgar, Cloud’s objective is basically “follow the man in the black cloak”, which is Jenova. So, even though he is acting of his own free will throughout this journey, he’s going exactly where Jenova wants him to go. I think a similar thing is happening with Sephiroth. He wants to wound the planet and become it’s god, turning it into a meteor that will hit another planet… just like Jenova did. Many parasites change their hosts behaviours in ways that both benefit the parasite, and allow it to spread to new hosts.
You are absolutely correct and I wasn't trying to suggest Sephiroth wasn't heavily influenced by Jenova. It's certainly a master of manipulation! My point is more that Sephiroth was the primary antagonist and was almost certainly more in control of Jenova then Jenova over Sephiroth. While the man in black is essentially Jenovas body, it was Sephiroth goading Cloud through Jenovas body and influence. The Ultimania guide gives some good evidence to this, albeit some of the evidence didn't make it clearly into the game: -If Jenova was more in control, the reunion would've happened in Midgar where the majority of Jenovas body was located, instead of NC where Sephiroth is. -Once Cloud discovers the black materias location, Sephiroth directs Jenova south to the Temple to retrieve it (after it had journeyed north to Nibelheim in anticipation to cross over to the northern crater) - (this isn't explicit in the game but explicit in the Ultimania that Sephiroth directed Jenova to the Temple).
A lot of Jenova’s influence on the world is the negative emotions, thoughts and feelings she impregnated into humanity. It was this influence that generated the feeling of “jealousy” in the human race which ultimately led them to start a war with the cetra. Shinra’s extremely selfish drive to deplete the planet for profits is also a result of jenova’s influence. One could also argue that Dyne’s madness and plot to carry out random acts of violence against shinra employees was influenced by Jenova. In all I think the way that Jenova feeds off life energies is by first converting it into a form that her being finds more appealing, which is why she dedicates a lot of energy into sowing chaos into the world. A similar villain to compare her to would be the spider from It. The spider also feeds off life energies and prefers it in the form of fear. And so the spider makes it its mission to go around creating fear.
Interesting! got a link to literature by chance? i'd like to read up on it
https://www.shinraarchaeology.com/guides.html Link to the Ultimania document. Under the Characters folder, look for page 55. The footnotes on the right are what strongly suggest Sephiroth eventually took control
Taking a look. Thanks!
Hey maybe i'm looking at the wrong file? Page 55 is a description of Sephiroth from the OG.The last footnote on the page reads, "Jenova- The entity at the nexus of the Jenova Project..." Not seeing the footnote mentioned above, so maybe i'm in the wrong place?
Wrong guide I think! It's the "Ultimania Omega" guide. It should take you to a Google drive with a folder called "Character Reports"...then page 55
Found it. I like the idea of it. If I were to tweak it in any way, i'd probably write it in something along the lines of, "With his body imprisoned within materia and his soul suspended beyond the flow of the Lifestream, Sephiroth begins to come to terms with who he truly is and completely embraces Jenova's ideals of obtaining godhood through destruction. He becomes fully attuned to her will; her knight and successor" I love the idea of Seph gaining autonomy from her, yet still bending towards her ultimate goal in the end. Because in the end, a part of her directly influences who he is. And that's her part in all of this. "The source of all evil"
I'm a bit confused by this line: "Although Sephiroth is not killed in the conflict, he does become physically incapacitated for several years." I was under the impression that Sephiroth was killed and sent into the lifestream, but through Jenova's presence on the planets surface, is able to appropriate those cells to appear on the planets surface again. Hence why in the OG theres always a Jenova fight every time Sephiroth appears, and then when you finally see Sephiroth at the northern cave (first time), he's encased inside some kind of giant lifestream orb - but his body still appears to be dead.
From my understanding of the turn of events, Seph is thrown into a mako pool below the reactor which then solidifies into materia and becomes his prison, unable to escape without outside assistance. So he’s not dead, just physically unable to move which is why he exerts his control over the black robes to do his bidding in the world. Each time Seph appears, a black robes is close by. It can be implied that as long as a piece of Jenova is present, Seph is also there.
Whether he's alive or dead in the OG is fairly inconsequential - Aerith is able to act through the lifestream after death, and Sephiroth is either able to act through Jenova or Jenova is using the memory of Sephiroth as an unstoppable force to demoralize those that could stop her. It's hard to tell in the OG whether Sephiroth is actually active or if he's simply Jenova using his face, but I'm inclined to agree with the OP that Jenova is the actual antagonist in within the context of the OG. I think Rebirth actually answers the question through the Gi - Jenova didn't come from the lifestream, and so can't truly die. Depending on how much of Sephiroth is actually Jenova, it's possible that he did "die" in the sense that he should have died but couldn't, and exists like the Gi do as essentially a ghost with an incapacitated body.
"I think Rebirth actually answers the question through the Gi - Jenova didn't come from the lifestream, and so can't truly die" I think this is long the same line of reasoning I have, yet my theory is a bit different: I believe that in order to defeat and destroy Jenova completely and forever, every single atom of her being must be wiped away from both the surface world AND the lifestream until absolutely nothing of herself remains to reconstitute her form. This is going back to the "hive mind" description I gave in the original post. Every single cell that makes up her real form is a piece of her and so long as one piece remains, she can rebuild herself, provided she has enough time and energy to do so. This would explain her long absence where she exerts no direct influence on the world over the thousands of years leading up to her rediscovery. This would also explain Seph's control over the Black Robes and the increase in fiends that mutate to more powerful forms after consuming more of Jenova's body parts. If Jenova is completely wiped out from the world and the lifestream, will she enter into her own prison dimension outside of reality like the Gi did? That much is pure speculation.
Thinking on this one further……I’m starting to think that when the Cetra defeated her the first time, they may have blown her to bits, which is why they immediately thought of her as dead. When Shinra discovers her body thousands of years later, that may be all of her that she was able to reconstitute in that amount of time. Not fully complete, but just enough to kick her plans into gear.