Jan 11 2009
Aerith’s Love
When Cloud crashes through the ceiling of a church, right on top of Aerith’s flower garden, she seems to throw herself at him rather desperately. Without really getting to know him, she asks him to be her bodyguard and in exchange, she’ll go out with him. She takes him back to her house, follows him out of Sector 6, and starts to fight along side him. If I hadn’t played Crisis Core first, I know what my first impression of Aerith would be: desperate and clingy.
And who wouldn’t think such a thing? She barely knows him and is throwing herself at him. Her step-mother gives Cloud a slight clue as to why she’s getting so attached, but to the gamer looking in, it doesn’t make much sense. Instead, it has the feel of writers wanting to move the love story along quickly so that gamers can focus on the main story of environmental struggle and evil corporations. And maybe that’s exactly what happened. I don’t know if Crisis Core was in the works at the time, or if the entire backstory of Zack Fair was written down, including his interlude with Aerith. Since Squaresoft does not have powers to see into the future (or maybe they do…), they most likely would not have known that FF7 would become the cult classic that it is and probably didn’t have Zack’s story heavily detailed.
But that doesn’t alter my perspective, since I did play Crisis Core first. So while I see Aerith throwing herself at Cloud, I see why. At the end of Crisis Core, you learn that Zack was undergoing Hojo’s experimentation for four years, so that was four years that Aerith had no idea what happened to Zack. She wrote him 89 letters, gave 88 to Tseng, and the last one to the Angeal-copy guarding her. Zack only received the last one, right before he fled Banora with Cloud in tow. Tseng most likely didn’t tell Aerith what happened to Zack during that time, because he really didn’t know. Shinra put out word that Zack was killed in action, but I doubt Tseng believed that since Shinra said the same thing about Sephiroth, Angeal, and Genesis. But I doubt Tseng knew that Hojo had him, as Cissnei was shocked to learn that Zack was the escaped experiment. I believe that Tseng told Aerith of Zack’s final fate, since he would have to tell her why he couldn’t give Zack the 88 letters. Or maybe Tseng became a total jerk — like he seems in FF7 — when Zack died, and he told Aerith nothing.
So here’s Aerith, who did love Zack, was seriously courted by him for some time, and he disappeared. And then Cloud drops in her church, just like Zack did over four years ago. He claims to be 1st Class SOLDIER, just like Zack. He even has spiky hair. He’s a lot gruffer than Zack and doesn’t have half the confidence, but he stumbles over his words like Zack. He gets embarrassed just as easily. He has a weird obsession with doing squats. Here he is, a man just like her first love has dropped from the sky for her. How could she not fall in love with him?
A friend asked me before I started FF7 if I would have problems with Aerith having feelings for Cloud when I loved her relationship with Zack so much. I said then no, and I still feel the same. Zack’s been gone for at least four years. She still sells flowers, which was his idea, and she wears pink, which was also his idea, but he’s still gone. No one should stay a nun just because her first love has died. It’s not like she’s totally forgotten Zack — she obviously hasn’t. She’s just moving on, albeit quickly with the first guy that helps her.
