Wait he's actually a huge piece of shit with zero redeeming qualities

His epic battle with Tails is what sold him for me

>Jenova's Witnesses strike again.
Wrong fucko. The games director and writers already deconfirmed this in Ultamania like 15 years ago and if you had a brain, you'd know without the explicit text.

Self insert

Wrong, it was confirmed over a decade ago that Sephiroth survived and was the one controlling Jenova (and through Jenova, all of the Sephiroth 'clones'/Cloud). You don't actually see him until you reach the Norther Crater, though - the whole game you're actually chasing the decapitated Jenova body that he's remotely using as his avatar, morphed into his appearance. Then he merges with said body for the final boss fight.

He's a momma's boy, and i love my momma

>people still don't know my headcanon.
ya don't say?

Because of the sheer intimidation throughout the first disc into the second. Every scene he appears he is portrayed as beyond you, beyond human itself, on a level of power that can slay boss fights in seconds effortlessly that would last you minutes relying on Materia wisely to help you out. And on top of that it's the looming threat of him seeking even more power out grasping for godhood by planning to sacrifice mankind in order to get it.

An iconic design, near constant prophetic levels of fear, disturbing origins involving your own character, great music, an iconic weapon, some of the best scenes in an already massively celebrated and beloved game. He's the complete villain package you could want from a JRPG.

Sephiroth's only downfall as a character is he ceases to be a character after the beginning of the Second Disc all the way to the Third Disc where you fight him in the climax.

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>former badass hero
>faced with learning he's not a real person
>lost in an identity crisis
>goes mad trying to make sense of it all
>sets on a course to right what he perceives are the wrongs of the past
>becomes an enigmatic unstoppable specter that blurs the lines of fact and fiction
>constantly one step ahead of the player characters, all the way to the end
>evil enough to hate
>successful enough that you'll relish your eventual victory
>tragic enough to sympathize with
>cool sword
>cool theme song

>"zero redeeming factors"

He's a good character, get over it.

he kills dragons in one hit
and flys
and laughs cooly

His major downfall is actually thst he's a shitty character that's 1-dimensional and not given enough screen time and instead turned into this nebulous threat. They could do a psychological horror story about Sephiroth going insane in the Nibelheim mansion and it would have been great.

He's being controlled by Jenova, to the point of continuing her initial goal of assimilating the planet and moving on to the next. Sephiroth was never in control.

>fanfic theories debunked by writers and the director 15 years ago
Stop user.

he was still the coolest motherfucker I ever seen when this game came out.

to a middle schooler, this was edgy and dope as shit, it was because of sephiroth that I grew my hair out and adopted a rocker look for high school

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This. It’s all about the character design and tension during his interactions. Nice post.

Again, confirmed by the creators in the Ultimania years ago that he was stronger mentally than Jenova and was the one controlling her, not the other way around. He realized he was related to the Final Fantasy version of Lavos and decided 'Why the hell not, let's take over this world and go find another, just like momma wanted'. Jenova was his inspiration, but she wasn't in control.

reminder that cloud was able to kill sephiroth because having a sword thrust through him caused his limit bar to fill completely

That sounds gay as fuck.

The game even explicitly tells you when it's Jenova talking. The whole "it was Jenova all along" theory is nonsensical even within the game.

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Nah, Zack had the Preemptive Materia slotted to the Buster sword before Cloud picked it up - you can see it if you check your stats. Cloud got a Sneak Attack Critical on him.

GAMERS RISE UP

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Great theme
Girls want to rape him
Weeaboos want his sword

>Jenova was his inspiration, but she wasn't in control.
This.
It should be noted that during the Nibelheim Incident she (or rather it) was gaining control over Sephiroth. Cloud literally stopped that by throwing him in the Lifestream, which created a new amalgam of Mako, Lifestream energy, and Jenova cells. The "new" Sephiroth had gained eldritch knowledge of the Cetra (including the black materia and the threat Aerith posed to him) and Jenova became and extension of his will.

lmao he throws sephiroth around like a rag doll

Cool hair and
“ Bells frogs big cherries Peter Pan Mac n Cheese SEPHIROTH!”

Plot Twist: None of that is make-up.

>he's actually a huge piece of shit with zero redeeming qualities
That's one of the reasons why I love him. His design is cool and his theme is one of the best songs in vidya history. Also, fuck Aeris, Tifa and Yuffie are better anyway.

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based zoomerpost

You must be like 40

S-E should make a DLC of Sephiroth's story before the FFVII events.

Ex-Death would shit all over this loser

Yes.
Last act is Nibelheim Incident as a horror game where Sephiroth goes nuts and sees crazy Thing-tier monsters everywhere.

"Magitek, not even once"

*magicite

>Teenager
>Incel
Great oxymoron you memeing idiot

Not him but do you not know what an oxymoron is

hmmm it's interesting how everyone considers OWA as sephiroth's theme, but I think this is more appropriate youtu.be/3rV40ypje7o
Still OWA is iconic and one of the greatest final boss themes ever. Birth of a god is nice too.

>actually a huge piece of shit with zero redeeming qualities
because he's a huge piece of shit with zero redeeming qualities

?
Retard, illiterate, or ESL?

Whenever I see opinions about stuff from FF7 in this site I can instantly tell who has played it and who doesn't

This. He's clouds foil, he should've stayed dead and not come back in all ff7 spin off media since

Who hasn't played it in this thread. Let's see the expert knock it out of the park.

>tight little bod

Is Cloud canonically a manlet in-game?

Uhhh bc hes cool af and he has an awesome sword? Are you gay or something?

How is he a piece of shit?
He wasn't a bad guy before he realized that he's a genetic experiment created from the DNA of his imprisoned alien mother, and he fell into the Lifestream which quite literally drove him mad. If he never fell into the lifestream, he wouldn't have even done anything after getting revenge on the Shinra.

Literally the opposite, Sephiroth is controlling Jenova...

what is Yea Forums's favorite excerpt from LOVELESS?

>be perfect individual
>find out you are a test tube babby
>CRAWLING IN MY SKIN
>slaughters innocent people for no reason
>stopped by a jabroni
>joins jenova in her quest to quench her asshurt by destroying the earth
Nah.

>mfw I figured out that you don't actually meet Sephiroth until the final boss fight and his appearances throughout the game were just Jenova taking on his form

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Roses are red, violets are blue
Genesis is gay, and so are you.

I figure they're going by "her" flat chest.

He's less anime swordsman in the actual game and more horror movie slasher with a small cult following him everywhere and mommy alien cthulhu looming ominously behind him at all times.

For the exact same reason people like non-characters such as Broly.

He's quite literally an alien, why would human morality apply to him? Acting in his nature as a completely different species doesn't make him evil. That's like saying a cat eating mice makes the cat evil.

Crisis Core already covered that though.

His power is maximum?

>human intelligence.
>lives amongst humans his entire life.
>"Why would morality apply to him?"
It applies to Cloud just fine.

The games makes clear that people like Sephiroth and people like Zack and Cloud come from different kinds of experiments with Jenova cells and Sephiroth is much more Jenova than they are.

The game makes abundantly clear he was fully human mentally until he went bonkers. He's not some different species.

There should have been no FFVII spin off media period. All of it sucks

>One of the plot points in VII is Cloud and the gang have to get to the top of Shinra HQ to rescure Aeris
>In Advent Children Cloud effortlessly jump/flies up and around the building like it's nothing.

What's your point? Jenova cells in any concentration can turn you into a crazy monster or just plain crazy. In fact it almost unilaterally does those two things with only Zack seemingly immune. Sephiroth, if anything, seemed more composed.
The truth of it is morality probably shouldn't apply to Sephiroth because he has subhuman IQ thanks to Jenova experiments.

Hey, Broly's a pretty ok character now. He's just autistic because he grew up on Klendathu, with nobody but a giant monster and his abusive father to keep him company.

I wouldn't have minded Crisis Core if not for all the Gackt wankery.

To be honest, while Sephiroth was very chill and a decent guy before the big reveal, he also had a weird, melancholic thing going on for him. Like he was bored, or sad, or couldn't connect with people very well.

Remember that cutscene where Cloud beats Aerth like a wife beater wearing cliche out of anger for letting him hand over the black materia to Sephiroth? I bet you that scene is cut

They're definitely not going to have it be him just mercilessly wailing on her, but he'll probably still backhand her or something.

Probably the worst part of the character is he comes off as this self-important autist. I can see why he inspired anime t-shirts

i have the whole thing memorized and will deeply disappointing if it is not a main focal point of at least the Midgar section

He is though. He was led to believe he was human but in reality he quite literally is an alien, just like Jenova. And finding that truth out, of course it changed him. He realized a hostile species has enslaved and manipulated him and his mother.

Go dilate, discord tranny.

If they keep it I wonder if they'll change it to Cloud taking out his anger at himself on her to cloud still being brainwashed into hitting her. It seems like thanks to the spin offs people have forgotten Cloud could say and do some pretty mean things in the game proper like his little fucks given towards the innocent people who got killed thanks to his and his party's actions in midgar, I bet they'll make him sympathize with Yuffie too instead of telling her straight up he doesn't give a shit about her problems and to give him back the shit she stole from him and fuck off.

Kinda like how come spin offs alot of Lighting's asshole behavior was glossed over in favor of just snide comments

Because he's so hot and edgy and cool! It's a load of shit, but that's the entire reason.

What little there is there is ripe to be expanded upon, too. Before he goes insane, he's basically anime Captain America with a big old sword.

>even in the first flashback scene told by Cloud, Sephiroth looking off to his left, not the direction "Cloud" walks in from
Do you think this is a flaw since Cloud should remember Sephiroth looking at him regardless or a masterpiece of foreshadowing?

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OG VII doesn't show enough of pre-crazy Sephiroth to say anything about his personality, but there are some interesting nuances to him in CC. He's a decent guy to his friends, but also passive, isolated, generally unwilling to stand for anything, and quite arrogant without realizing it. There's a curious email in CC that talks about the differences between the three super 1sts. All of them were introverts, but Angeal maintained social relationships, Genesis only barely (while he was still sane), and Sephiroth talked to nobody and no one dared to say anything to him.
Basically, he was a suprime autist with no coping skills.

*supreme

>Long ass katana
>Black leather
>Supposedly cool looking
>White hair
>The main villain
I'm glad I never got into Final Fantasy, especially VII. But even that edgelord is more appealing than whatever they were trying to do with Toblerone-Sama.

>It seems like thanks to the spin offs people have forgotten Cloud could say and do some pretty mean things in the game proper like his little fucks given towards the innocent people who got killed thanks to his and his party's actions in midgar,
To be fair, FF7 tends to brush those things off despite pretending to care. I mean Reno is played as fucking comic relief in every scene he's even though he's kills everyone in Sector 7. Your characters don't even care about it when you encounter him next.

Oh I hope that gets retconned.

>s Jenova controlling his corpse.
People still pushing this narrative when nothing backs it up

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Think they'll keep the scene where Hojo tries to 'save' both Aerith's and Nanaki's respective species by breeding them together, or is that too touchy for kids these days?

There's nothing edgy about Sephiroth as a character, the only reason you think he's edgy is because of all the teens that were edgy and used Sephiroth in their Playstation usernames because they looked at the character no closer than you did, only caring about the appearance.
The character overall is very interesting and well written.

He has a cool sword.

No, he is not in the shot there, so Cloud remembersthe actual Seph's movements.
That's actually why Cloud is off camera.

I would love to believe the latter because that is excellent foreshadowing.

I've been replaying this recently and it's impressive how people tend to forget that this game gets FF5 levels of goofy. I hope they're able to keep those tone shifts.

It's foreshadowing. If I remember correctly, during the real flashback, Zack walks onto the screen right at the spot where Sephiroth is looking - but he's talking about their mission there. Zack turns to Cloud and says the line to him instead - "It's your first time back in your Hometown in a long time, right?". Sephiroth doesn't even acknowledge Cloud's existence at this point during the actual events.

None of that writing appears outside the original game. Every other appearance has flanderized the fuck out of him, same with Cloud. I don't even think Square today knows he used to be upbeat and chipper for the most part. You'll never see FFVII Cloud ever again, not even in the remake.

Because he is literally me.

Well, he's literally dead and only animated by a cosmic disease.

Because he BTFO's roasties and loves his mom.

Truly /ourguy/

but Vergil is well written character

He wasn't that bad of a guy before he went crazy, but he ended up being more style over substance.

Sephiroth does ask Cloud though.
It's even in CC.

Bahahahahahahahahha

Northern Crater is PURE KINO

Okay... What's more likely...
-Humans doing unethical experiments using mako energy, human test subjects and an alien disease living inside the planet, producing a super soldier who dies, gets absorbed by the planet and gets taken over by the alien disease due to the inherent advantage it has due to familiar genetics
-Humans doing unethical experiments using mako energy, human test subjects and an alien disease living inside the planet, producing a super soldier who dies, who then takes over the alien disease because reasons
Why is one human tainted by a disease more powerful than the entire planet, a planet that was incapable of destroying or taking over the disease?

fujos like him because they ship him with cloud. that's about it, though.
if it wasn't for kefka (aka "reddit: the character"), sephiroth would be the most overrated villain in the franchise.

I want to suck his dick

>Wait he's actually a huge piece of shit with zero redeeming qualities
because he represents exxon mobil and BP gas. Didn't you play the game?

yes. he's 5'6 and 120 lbs. Him swinging a giant sword around like nothing is supposed to look strange

There are smart people on this board

Cloud wasn't upbeat and chipper, he was just bland. Replay the game; he barely has any personality. Whenever he interacts with anyone, all the work has to be done by the other character because Cloud displays very little characterizaton.

It's not a matter of likelihood:
We already know the truth.
The 'Jenova is controlling Sephiroth' is not only flat-out untrue, but Sephiroth'S plans, actions, and personality are fundamentally different than those under Jenova's thrall (aka the numbers retards, and Cloud when he's mind-controlled).

The "reason" Sephiroth takes over Jenova is because he is a new life form: a mix of Jenova, Mako, and the Lifestream. Jenova doesn't mix well with the Lifestream and Sephiroth's little swim gave him the distinction he needed.

>Humans doing unethical experiments using mako energy, human test subjects and an alien disease dormant and buried on the planet, producing a super soldier who is injured and falls into the planet's conciousness that preserves him encased in mako, who then takes over the alien disease because he hates everything and everyone.
Ftfy

I mean in the original artwork, him riding that chocobo is something you'll never see ever again, it's like an abnormality compared to his usual portrayal today.

It's too idiotic for kids these days, because anyone who passed high-school biology should know that different species can't produce fertile offspring by definition. That's literally what "different species" means.

It's for the science man.
You have to experiment.

That makes him into a mary sue. And yes with that appearance I'll use the feminine variant of the term. Prettyboy with a nothing personnel sword with unlimited power who can overpower an apocalyptic pestilence that murders worlds.

You're nuts. Who cares what Sephiroth is like in non canon separate games like Kangdom Hearts.
And you couldn't be more wrong about Cloud being "upbeat and chipper" for most of FF7, so untrue. He is cold and uncaring right from the start and later becomes a broken angsty mess psychologically. Some of his very first lines in the game are "I don't care what happens to the planet or these people, not my problem".
The remake seems to capture his personality accurately, from what we have seen.

is there a term on the internet as misused as 'mary sue'?

No it does not make him into that. It's literally explained through good plot reasons why he became that powerful.

Bad writing.

this

It's the sword, little kids get their pee pees hard for giant swords.

It'll probably be hand waved to he wants to do experiments with them and nothing to do with watching the dog-on-girl action

t. reddit
the REAL best final fantasy villain, the patrician's choice, is based golbez.

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Really good character design
Interesting backstory

He's actually quite likeable in Crisis Core until he goes mad. He even sends letters to Zack at one point, revealing personal shit like how he uses a ton of shampoo in his hair.

You don't even know what a Mary Sue is. Sephiroth is a 'standard evil' character that crumbles when directly confronted by the protagonists.
A Mary Sue is always a protagonist too, not the villain.
Furthermore, having a villain that is powerful sells you on how your characters should fear him. The fact that he gains control of Jenova only makes him more threatening. That fact that he, through circumstance and sheer force of will, could gain control of this cosmic entity.

That was one picture with zero context, referencing a mostly optional minigame. Meanwhile, even his early concept art looked like pic related.

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>Sephiroth is controlling Jenova!
>No Jenova is controlling Sephiroth!

Sephiroth is Jenova. The soldier Sephiroth died that day at Nifelheim, he became Jenova's host. Jenova has no personality of its own, its just a planet eating parasite. They are one being from that point onward.

>Furthermore, having a villain that is powerful sells you on how your characters should fear him. The fact that he gains control of Jenova only makes him more threatening.
I disagree. I think it just makes him a lazily written character who's power is left insufficiently justified. A much more interesting variant would be one where Cloud thinks that he's pursuing Sephiroth when he's actually being summoned by Sephiroth, but ultimately Sephiroth merely though he too was in control all this time, when obviously it's the cosmic horror that wins over a weird human frankenstein experiment. When Sephiroth is the one who can overpower Jenova, that means that the human experiment was successful, that "playing god" with things your species doesn't understand does produce results, and those results are superior than the sum of their parts. Sephiroth was a combination of a human, a planet's mystical energy that we barely understand, and an alien disease that even "the advanced ancient civilization" couldn't understand, and he's literally more powerful than any of those things. In other words the more horrific the science, the better it works. Damn good moral of the story right there. If we only gave Shinra a few more decades of their unethical practices they could have uplifted the entire world into the stage of a galactic superpower.

>he used to be upbeat and chipper
Most of those "upbeat and chipper" moments were usually self-insert moments letting you interact with the game's world. I wouldn't really count those as part of his characterization.

Still disappointed we never got a true battle with him outside of the somewhat scripted battle in the Dwarven castle.

So why isn't a cosmic being that always tops the human mind a Mary Sue?

Someone already explained that the term can only refer to the protagonist. And a mary sue needs to be proficient at everything they do, I doubt that's applicable when it's a virus and only has a single autonomous function and no other motivations. Mold isn't a mary sue even though it's very good at doing what it does because it only ever does one thing.

This is suspiciously detailed , let's talk about your early years user...

Who gives a shit? They just changed that later when they write the book. FF7 as a self contained game in 1997, jeniva was in control the whole game

A Mary Sue is someone who is adored by everyone, has no flaws, and excels at everything. The origin is a fanfic OC that all the characters fell in love with despite them all having different tastes normally.

>The origin is a fanfic OC
The origin is an actual character from an episode of Star Trek

>The term "Mary Sue" comes from the name of a character created by Paula Smith in 1973 for her parody story "A Trekkie's Tale"[2]:15 published in her fanzine Menagerie #2.[3] The story starred Lieutenant Mary Sue ("the youngest Lieutenant in the fleet — only fifteen and a half years old"), and satirized unrealistic characters in Star Trek fan fiction.[4]

ah yes the war

The fuck? Mary Sue means a character is infallible

Huh, I know I remember an actual character in an episode of TNG that Riker falls in love with, and then turns out to be the daughter of a Q with all of their reality warping powers.

Are you retarded by any chance? The game outright tells you who is speaking when and whose agenda you're trying to stop. Guess what, it's Sephiroth's.

It's Sephiroth's will controlling Jenova actually

being a literal god doesn't make a character unflawed. She was in denial about her powers and its pointed out at the climax of the episode that she wouldn't keep her promise to not use her powers, even if for good purposes

Best post in the thread.
It poses another question, though.
Does Jenova even exist as a conscious entity anymore? When Sephiroth was thrown into the lifestream and given the spiritual energy necessary to instead control Jenova, he also came to be inspired by it's original goal. At this point, you have to ask whether or not Sephiroth was truly himself anymore or his motive in FF7 is a result of them becoming one. He acts as if he's enlightened and in control, but even after bathing in lifestream and becoming near god-like, he is still a slave to the instincts of his "mother".

step aside, greatest final boss move passing by