#nomura hironobu

[its-kapi-wara]

"You're so quiet today darling, what's on your mind?"

I was busy thinking about the manga/anime male characters whose physical appearance were inspired by real people...

[moviesludge]

I'll be like this for a while

[mimimimisleepy]

ash lynx manga design you will always be famous to me <3 kinda took some liberties in adding more nods to river phoenix

+ bonus eiji inspired off of hironobu nomura

[climbing-starrs]

FINALLY figured out how to FUCKING DRAW THEM

[henriquelage]

Nostalgia can be a bad partner, but what about anti-nostalgia? What is the value of the things we leave behind? Why does “Final Fantasy” approach the JRPG genre in a different way? What does it have in common with “Star Wars”?

(with ENGLISH SUBTITLES)

[fly-boy-in-the-sky]

Akimi Yoshida’s River Phoenix / Hironobu Nomura + Banana Fish Sketches Art

Uploaded by @/kachi_ttonabf on Twitter. Images are from the late eighties, and I’m assuming the signatures are from the nineties based on the style change.

[roseartsandfics]

Tifa (OG) -- Rose

I'm baaaaaaaaack!

Golly, I hadn't even displayed anything for awhile, now ^^;. I've been busy, yes. First time back to displaying after the hiatus! Here is another rose artwork featuring my favorite FF character Tifa Lockhart, in the original FFVII, of course ^^

So wondering why I am not active as much? I was doing another virtual career camp. And I've been dealing with mental health issues for a while. It lasted for days, and I am still trying to recover, but I hope this helps.

Some spoils as I am about to say, for those who hadn't played CC, so yeah, be aware of that lol

I beat Crisis Core Reunion last month just before starting FFVII OG. So I managed to get up to the Minerva optional boss, and holy crap I could not defeat her 0_0. I knew she was going to be hard to defeat 0_0. One of my biggest mistakes is not getting the Genji Shield (which is missable to me, and impossible because I only mastered one Octaslash, and I was not going to take FOREVER to master three more), and possibly not having enough materia to convert to SPs, which I was losing due to the SP materia things I used to prevent more damage. Hey, Ziedrich and SP Turbo or Mastered works! They say Costly Punch works, but it made it a lot worse for my SP and getting damage and die every time without getting a Phoenix Down on time (no offense). Aerial Drain and Jump are slower. Surprisingly (prepare for what it works on her), Darkness works on her. HP wa getting low, but I can be fast on healing, and so I beat her! I gave her multiple tries because I am afraid of how other battles in other FF will be, and I don't want to lose the chance on beating them (Jevil from Deltarune I gave up because he was impossible to defeat XP)

Anyways, so I finished Tifa today, and did I little experiment on coloring and made more designable rather than make my coloring more crappy lol. It's been awhile since drawing her in the OG, and I've been playing the OG for a bit, and so here she is! I started using the Crayola Colors of the World pencils to actually color something more divergent and shadowing her hair and skin. I did her eyes differently because I don't feel like drawing her eyes in my style the way I always draw eyes (I am bad at drawing eyes lol). I am actually really happy how this turned out to be ^^. I actually liked how this piece turned out! ❤️ I just love her, and her characteristics as well in the game (and film) <3. I am still writing my fanfic, just hadn't gotten around to it.

We are supposed to have a tropical storm, so I can get this displayed before potential power outage. There… probably isn't going to be much gaming, unless I can play my 3DS and switch handheld, or write (which I can write my fanfics are awhile if the interent isn't wonky, or so, idk), or read, or draw, or whatever the hell I'm doing. I might be on hiatus again after the storm due to potential outage, so this will be the post before the storm. At least we are prepared, tornadoes are the ones I am worried about, but I'm watching. Stay safe and have a good night!

For those who don't know, any rose portrait arts are inspired by a friend of mine on Deviantart (still)! Welp, good night, and sleep well!

Tifa Lockhart and Final Fantasy VII ©Tetsuya Nomura, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yoshinori Kitase, Yusuke Naora and SQUARE ENIX

Artwork ©RosePrincessArts

No copyright infringement is intended

Used: Soho Studio pencils and colored pencils, Crayola regular and Colors of the World colored pencils, Cra-Z-Art colored pencils and blending stumps

[planckstorytime]

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: A World Beyond Anger (Part Six)

VI. … And Why It Doesn’t Matter

You thought I was done complaining? No, never.

Doubtless someone will punch holes in my theory, and I wouldn’t even feign indignation. The truth is that none of the explanations posed by fans have established a coherent story. But the fact that this is where our attention has been directed – away from the emotional moments that give stories relevance in the first place – exposes the shallowness of this trade-off. Even if my desired theory comes to fruition, I don’t think it redeems Rebirth’s rendition of Aerith’s death.

The consistency, or lack thereof, between the obnoxious multiverse stuff and the franchise’s established lore ultimately matters little when you’ve already squandered that critical moment that makes us care. From whatever universe you view it, Rebirth demonstrates a puzzling ambivalence to Aerith’s passing. The impact of loss never lands, because moments later you have Zack stepping in for a tag-team match with Cloud against Sephiroth. It’s framed as some fist-pumping “fuck yeah” moment, complete with embarrassingly out-of-place musical callbacks and quotes from Crisis Core (2007). It doesn’t feel like purposeful whiplash to create a sense of disorientation, but rather completely tone-deaf and disrespectful fanservice, all during a moment that should leave the player feeling hollow. And no sooner has Aerith left the building than she rises again like the goddamn Undertaker, kicking ass and eliminating any modicum of loss. Whether she’s in the lifestream or a parallel timeline or a phantom of Cloud’s addled mind is a distinction without a difference. Her death – and perhaps all death in the series – has lost its significance, because it feels merely inconvenient.

Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series and story planner for the original FF7, channeled the pain and shock of his mother’s death into the loss of Aerith. Where once there was a source of joy, now there is only a void that will never be filled. In the original game, you’ll always have that empty slot on your party selection screen to remind you of who you’re missing. It’s an aching, uncomfortable treatment of death in fiction that was unconventional for its medium at the time. It cut straight to players’ hearts. With this is mind, does Rebirth capture anything remotely comparable? Should we call Sakaguchi and tell him his mom is still kicking somewhere?

When asked about the scene by Game Informer, Nomura had this to say:

“Prior to Final Fantasy VII, there have been other titles where characters have experienced tragedy, but many of them have come back or been revived in some ways. But I believe that loss is something that happens unexpectedly, and it’s not something so dramatic or drawn out, but is something in which a person that you have just conversed with is suddenly gone and never to come back. I believe that the person who dies should not return in this title, and that is what we did with the original… I do believe that the way we have depicted it brings about a new emotion and a new feeling for both players who have played the original Final Fantasy VII and newcomers.”

I struggle to conceive what this “new emotion” could be. Bewilderment? I can’t imagine another response when the developers diminish the tragedy of a lost friend because they want you to be more invested in keeping track of the stupid cartoon dog! Nothing can rationalize the cluttering of this sequence with a shell game that asks us to follow the Black/White/Clear Materia. This sequence, and the events immediately leading up to it, should not have been reduced to a gimmick of prestidigitation. We’re not wondering what we’ll do without Aerith – we’re wondering which sleeve she’s hiding in, so to speak. All of these unnecessary contrivances dare you to solve them, encourage you to switch off your Lizard Brain. But if you turn off your Lizard Brain and welcome those higher mammal functions, you’re bound to see how stupid all of this truly is. For Christ’s sake, we’re naming these worlds after dog breeds! Is that really worth what we’ve lost?

Mechanically-speaking, too, I feel the 1997 game better executed the subsequent battle. There’s an often overlooked quality of the Jenova LIFE fight: It’s really easy. Equip the Water Ring you picked up five minutes earlier and you’ve essentially won the fight. This works really well because you’re not supposed to be thinking hard about strategy and tactics or rocking out to Jenova’s awesome theme song – the battle just gives you time to chew on what’s happened, all the while Aerith’s theme softly rings in your ears. Rebirth gives you a complicated, high-flying, multi-stage boss fight that drops your dead friend’s musical motif midway through. Now, your party is dropkicking an eldritch monster and shouting quips, while electric guitars and synths blare in the background. You need to be actively paying attention for the hour-long boss gauntlet that follows, and it feels wrong to me. I didn’t party wipe; I’m not bad at this game (I beat Gilgamesh at level 49, prior to the endgame) – but micromanaging a chaotic battle drains what little emotion remained. I just felt numb in between fits of laughter.

That is to say, the ending of Rebirth feels like a trip to the dentist.

New mysteries take priority over an earnest portrayal of events, and I just don’t think they’re compelling enough to warrant that. Our knowledge of them has barely advanced since part one. We knew going in that Zack was in a different world, denoted by a different Stamp. And now we know… that there are different worlds denoted by different Stamps. For all the rigmarole, we learned shockingly little. The mystery didn’t really progress, aside from showcasing such a circus of inconsistencies that we’re basically forced to accept that it operates on dream logic. The true ending remains to be seen, but if the clues only amount to “the clues not adding up”, then I’d say that this plotline hasn’t felt rewarding.

My gut tells me this all leads to a cul-de-sac. I judge these riddles as cynical mystery boxes with little concrete direction. Rebirth backtracks on several of Remake’s more audacious changes, completely dropping plot points in some cases. I suspect the final game will do the same, and we’ll have something approaching the original. After all, this “adds up” to Advent Children, by Kitase’s admission. The man likewise expressed that the story will likely be adjusted based on audiences’ responses to the ending of the second part. Given that the narrative disruptions have had mixed reactions at best this time, I believe it’s fair to guess that we’re just looping back to the OG plot anyway.

With all of this in mind, attempting to unravel these unknown elements seems like a massive waste of time. I don’t find this ending quite as intolerable as that of Remake, but it still comes off as tacky and desperate. I think the third part will likely still be fun and contain many of the great moments from the latter half of the original. But I can’t hide my disappointment that, even though my worst nightmares about the project didn’t come to pass, it didn’t fully rehabilitate itself in my eyes either.

I won’t lie – when I started to feel that familiar anger rising again, I got scared. I didn’t get the clean resolution that I wanted, and I worried that destructive obsession would take me over again. I feared I was about to relapse into the world’s stupidest addiction.

All of a sudden, it clicked together. I spent 120 hours staring straight at the answer, oblivious to it. Yet it finally came to me.

FULL ESSAY: https://planckstorytime.wordpress.com/2024/05/11/final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-a-world-beyond-anger/

[thehandwixard]

also the fact that eraqus (mark hamill, star wars, the light) and xehanort (leonard nimoy, star trek, the darkness) have names that are both anagrams but eraqus is notable that his is an anagram of square and his design explicitly references the appearance of hironobu sakaguchi. (xehanort is an anagram of another/no heart +x. i personally enjoy another) like. what was nomura cooking. i need yto know what he means by this. what can it mean

[h-worksrambles]

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is somehow simultaneously both the game I’m most excited for next year and yet I also can’t remember the last time I was so anxious for a new release.

For context. I love Final Fantasy VII. It’s my second favourite game in the series. I played it in 2019 with no nostalgia and was stunned at how well it holds up. Its story is a compelling ride that’s still painfully relevant to this day. The characters are loveable and multi fascinated. The combat is simple while having enough nuance to sink your teeth into and the world is a joy to explore. It’s an iconic game but one that earns every bit of its reputation.

You know what I also loved? Final Fantasy VII Remake. It brought the world and characters I adored to life in a new way that captivated me all over again. It has some of my favourite combat in the series, and it visually captured the original better than I could have hoped. Even the controversial ending pivot was something I could respect for what it was saying on a meta level about the need for VII to evolve in order to keep discussion of it alive. But that new direction demands that what comes after has to be a worthy complement to what VII originally did. And now that Rebirth’s getting closer, we’re soon gonna get our answer about that.

And that’s the thing. On many counts, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth looks amazing. The pivot to an open world looks promising (I know that the devs citing Horizon as a source has got some folks worried it’s gonna go full Ubisoft in terms of open design but I’n cautiously optimistic that the exploration will be good). Every change to the combat in terms of new abilities, mechanics and party members feel smartly chosen to make for a smoother experience. Every scene they’ve shown in trailers promises to lovingly re imagine and expand so many phenomenal parts of the original. Red XIII’s self reflection at Cosmo Canyon, Barret’s symbolically facing his darkest impulses through Dyne at Corel. The entire Nibelheim incident with a PLAYABLE Sephiroth, letting us experience the terrifying gap in power between him and Cloud through the gameplay? I really couldn’t ask for more.

But that’s not all there is to this is there? Following on from Remake’s ending we now have an alternate timeline with Zack Fair, having survived the events of his tragic death, looking for Aerith. And on some levels, this could actually be really cool. The trailers imply that Biggs apparent survival also only happened in this other timeline. Our Biggs, Wedge and Jessie (that Remake did such a good job expanding and making us cry over) are still gone. And this other Biggs has been hardened by those experiences. That’s interesting and allows him to develop without undoing that fantastic death scene that Remake gave him. There is promising stuff here. It promises to be a legitimately NEW vision to complement the original without undermining its themes (and I want you to keep that in mind for what I say next).

And yet there is a troubling vision looming in the back of my head. And that vision is The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.

I do not like the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. I think it’s drab, baffling, incoherent mess that fundamentally does not understand the source material. And that’s odd because it’s made by many of the same people who made VII so legendary. There’s a tendency for uninformed, uncharitable takes to paint Tetsuya Nomura as a hack who went from character designer to creative lead and promptly butchered VII according to his whims the second Hironobu Sakaguchi stepped back. But all it takes is a cursory glance at the dev history to see that’s not the case. Many of the most applauded aspects of VII are things Nomura either suggested or helped with. Say what you will about Kingdom Hearts or the shudders …The Third Birthday. But Nomura does have a strong eye for game direction and ludonarrative. Many of the creatives on the Compilation have done sterling work elsewhere…

Which makes it all the more baffling that it’s so terrible.

Advent Children is an aimless collection of admittedly cool action scenes that also entirely misunderstands what VII did so well thematically. An attempt is made to continue its themes of grief and the cycle of life by effectively giving Cloud PTSD. But the execution is so one note and heavy handed that it only comes off as forced, and fails to do a character as nuanced as Cloud any justice. It doesn’t feel like a meaningful expansion of his character. It feels like it’s regressing him so he can learn the same lesson again. Which would be easier to stomach if it was done in the service of a realistic portrayal of depression, but it’s really not. When your depiction of these issues is so flat and cartoonishly one dimensional, maybe you just don’t have as much to say about grief and trauma as you think you do. Sure, the old 2000s critique that AC is bad because it’s ‘emo’ is surface level and bad faith. But that doesn’t make the movie any less shallow or badly written.

Crisis Core does admittedly do a wonderful job expanding on the character of Zack Fair to make for one of the series most loveable protagonists. But it’s also a 101 in bad prequel writing. A story dedicated to over explaining and cheapening the world and characters of the original. All in a bid to make room for a string of uninteresting, shallow new characters that are placed on an absurdly high level of importance in the lore at the cost of everyone else (please tell me whose idea it was to rob Sephiroth of all agency in his own downfall by having him be manipulated by Gackt’s OC?). All capped off with a faux intellectual, badly translated script that, for all its words, has so little to say compared to the original.

And the less said about Dirge of Cerberus or On the Way to a Smile, the better.

I’m worried that this is making me sound like some bitter purist. I don’t think Nomura or Nojima ‘ruined FFVII’ much as people love to parrot that. But I do think when these continuations chiefly exist because executives are breathing down their necks to milk the giant cow, even good creatives are going to make lesser art. And even then there are signs of ambition in the spin offs. But they’re tainted by a lack of restraint, and often compromise what worked about the original. Sometimes I could see what they were going for, but that didn’t make VII’s world and characters feel any less bastardised. Which is why I want to stress how much I loved Remake. It did have that tight execution and understanding of the original and its characters that the spin offs lacked. Hell I was even excited for the new potential of its ending.

But now a few years on, I have to wonder. How much of it is actually going to be ‘new’? And how much is just going to be dredging up the series’ old mistakes? The DLC for VII rounded off by reintroducing Nero, an antagonist from the much maligned Dirge of Cerberus, making him a canonical part of Yuffie’s story. 2022 saw the release of a remaster of Crisis Core shortly before marketing for Rebirth showed off Zack’s parallel story throughout the game. It is thus heavily implied that you should play Crisis Core Reunion, because this stuff is going to matter to Rebirth. And it was recently announced that Advent Children Complete is returning to Japanese theatres for the first time in years. The movie that so fundamentally damaged the perception of what FFVII is, is not so subtly being presented as being very important to whatever comes next. And that’s to say nothing of how Sephiroth’s portrayal in the Remake so far matches up scarily well with the novels’ revelations that he and Aerith are actually still alive in the Lifestream and can technically come back whenever they want (a retcon that actively makes my blood boil for how little it understands ANYTHING about VII for the sake of fanservice).

I mean…is this it? Is this all the ‘new story’ we have to look forward to? The same mystery box sequel baiting that dogs the later Kingdom Hearts games, and a bunch of heavy handed fanservice for all the worst excesses of the Compilation? Honestly, Remake was actually really good about how it used the Compilation. Carefully and selectively and threading in minor characters, worldbuilding details and homages so they fit more organically into VII’s world. It really felt like Square Enix had done through a wildly experimental phase, learned what worked and what didn’t, and were now exercising an ambitious but controlled hand. But maybe we’re sliding right back into that excess and schlock.

Back when Remake came out, I remember seeing many comparisons to the Rebuild of Evangelion movies. But now I’m wondering. What if this isn’t a deeply personal meta-textual commentary on how the creators’ relationship with their art has changed? What if it’s just a multiverse punch up filled with fanservice for a bunch of mediocre spin offs from the 2000s that people are apparently nostalgic for? Is Zack actually back because the writers think he would meaningfully enhance the story? Or is he back because they know how popular Zack is and know fans would eat up a potential reunion between him, Cloud and Aerith, no matter how little sense it makes?

But that’s also where I can breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief. Because a lot of my worries are still just ‘what ifs’. At the end of the day, what we have so far is a great remake of a classic, which has a highly promising sequel on the way. And I’m excited as hell to play it. And yet I can’t deny the uncertainty makes me uneasy. This trilogy of reimaginings has so much promise and potential. And I hope it doesn’t opt for shock value and fan service to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It’s from many of the same minds who made VII so special, but many of those same minds have proven they can also miss the mark of what they previously got so right. VII is a powerful story of identity, environmentalism, the nature of death and self reflection. It’s a scathing critique of capitalistic greed and our lack of respect for the planet. While also being a hopeful story of love and self betterment, that tells us the people we lose are in some small way still with us, as long as we remain in harmony with the natural world around us. If the Remake isn’t going to fully recreate that story for a new audience, then I hope at least that it’s got something equally worthwhile to say that can stand alongside it. But only time will tell.

[invincible-heaven]

For anyone who hasn't played this game before, brace yourself; it's very 'PS1' 😅 Released smack bang between FFVII and FFVIII (a preview of FFVIII actually came packaged with this), visually PE does look like the missing link between these two games, but plays more like the lovechild of FFVII and Resident Evil.

If the design of protagonist Aya Brea looks somewhat familiar, it's because she was created by our boy Tetsuya Nomura. Produced by FF's Hironobu Sakaguchi with a great soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura, who went on to compose many big SQE titles like Kingdom Hearts, Legend of Mana and FFXV.

[sapphire-weapon]

You said that the creator of FF deliberately trolls the shippers in the games?? 😭😭 has he ever talked abt the ships tho?

the creator of FF is hironobu sakaguchi, who hasn't worked on an FF or even been employed by square since FF10. he was firmly against creating a franchise out of any individual FF title, and so no FF received a direct sequel before he left the company. (of course, his office had barely even been cleaned out before SE announced FF10-2 LMAO)

yoshinori kitase is the executive producer of the FF7 remake project and was the director of FF7 OG.

tetsuya nomura was the director of FF7Remake, a producer on rebirth, a scenario writer for OG, and the director of advent children

THOSE TWO

troll shippers

and i'm sure they have said shit about the ships directly, but fuck if i have any of those quotes on hand. just go find some shipper and be like "hey what did nomura ever say about clerith" and i'm sure that fucker has that shit bookmarked -- or they know someone who does.

[moviesludge]

after the spider crawls into your ear while you sleep, it lays eggs in your brain and then this

[monsterhugger]

The actor for eiji is Hironobu Nomura and he’s the og inspiration for eiji in the manga <3 (same with river phoenix)

thank you!! I am surprised I didn’t know abt him since I feel like I see river phoenix everywhere in this fandom. Anyway he’s very cute :)

[mattdom]