Sephiroth - A Deconstruction of Villainy

This video will spoil the entire plot line of the original Final Fantasy 7. I have not played Rebirth yet, so I don't know how closely the Remake follows the original, but the video will undoubtedly spoil several key moments of the story for you if you have not finished either game yet.

This man made a 1 hour+ video about Sephiroth and didn’t play One Winged Angel even once. The sheer restraint on display is staggering.

My favorite quote about Sephiroth is "You know how they tell stories about someone and often they don't live up to them? With Sephiroth it's the exact opposite."

20:20 As evil as Sephiroth is Hojo is FF7's real monster.

The secret of Sephiroth's success is the writer's restraint in keeping him offscreen. Allowing the drip feed of information to build up the mystique. But also not making him too irrelevant off in the background where you forget about him. His actions are usually offscreen but CONSIQUENTIAL. You always just miss him after it's too late to stop him.

20:48 If Sephiroth knew Hojo was his dad, he'd have gone insane much sooner. Knowing he's related that walking ball of grease would have broken his mind so hard Jenova could've overtaken his mind from the opposite side of the planet.

The contrast between Sephiroth and Cloud extends to their identity crisises. Cloud loses his identity but, thanks to his friends, he is able to recover. Sephiroth also loses his identity, and embraces a lie, that Jenova is his Mother, that he is entitled to rule the world. He embraces this final fantasy (yep) so completely that eventually it completely overwhelms him, and whatever was left of the original Sephiroth is utterly and completely destroyed, sacrificed for the sake of power.

I love when the villain has enough of a presence that you shudder just hearing about them. You don’t ever see him until later on in the game, but you hear so much about him that you don’t forget him. Sephiroth is one of the few examples of this that I can think of, and it’s done very well.

Sephiroth is just one of those villains who is so compelling, EVERYONE has a shared respect for, wether it be from a point of inspiration, or outright fear.

Sephiroth invented the the gorgeous edgy nemesis trope and yet somehow doesn’t manage to fall into the trappings his contemporaries did. The Remake also added a dash of strange mix of angst and mutual pining between him and Cloud.

The gradual way Sephiroth is introduced to the player is nothing short of brilliant, that along with the pacing of his backstory. From beginning to end you are drip-fed bits of information regarding who he is and why he became what he did. Sephiroth goes from a legendary war hero who seemingly died 5 years ago, to an artificially produced Cetra obsessed with taking the planet back from humans, to being part of Jenova itself; and finally the full story was revealed. Sephiroth is human. His parents are both human, his mother being Lucrecia and his father the mad scientist Hojo. While still in the womb, Sephiroth was injected with Jenova cells by Hojo and that was why he was different from other people, why he was so powerful. To quote Sephiroth himself, "Ever since I was a child I felt different, special in some way but....not like this." In the end Hojo is the true villain responsible for most of the suffering in Final Fantasy 7, with Sephiroth being one of many victims of his cruelty.

The remake made me fall in love with Sephiroth all over again, reminding me why he is so iconic and one of my favorite villains in fiction. He is the Morning Star and Dark Angel of the FF franchise.

This part in 21:28 is still one of the goofiest scenes to me. Just seeing Sephiroth having to pull himself up to see in the port hole... This being of unfathomable power, having to clamber up to peak into the pod like a curious child makes me chuckle every time I see it.

I was going to watch this video Then suddenly, Sephiroth intervened

Have heard people saying they are disappointed how the story begins fighting an evil corp but moves to sephirot but to me sephirot also represents the results of what happens when the greed is left unchecked, a human built for the ambitions of others, same greed that lead them to experiment with jenova, giving raise to the apocalypse

The man himself is covering the man himself… This is going to be legendary

Another cool thing about Sephiroth is that he not only is a dark reflection of Cloud, but the other party members as well. Aerith, for example, is pretty much everything that Sephiroth initially believes about himself: a descendant of the Cetra race, chosen by the planet. Barret and Sephiroth both hate Shinra for what they done to the planet and themselves, but Sephiroth wants to kill all of humanity, whereas Barret limits himself to Shinra instead. Red was experimented on by Hojo like Sephiroth was. Cid, Vincent, and Cait Sith were former employees of Shinra that were wronged by them like Sephiroth. Tifa is similar to how Sephiroth is in Crisis Core, in which both are forced to watch as their friends descend to madness as a result of Shinra’s actions. The biggest difference between Sephiroth and the party is how they choose to deal with their traumas and the path they take.

1:02:07 after Rebirth we can see this happening again. It's implied that Sephiroth's new reunion can now only be attempted thanks to the group beating the arbiters of fate in Remake. So once again, Sephiroth has manipulated his enemies to get exactly what he wants.

Sephiroth is the perfect definition of the nemesis that always destroys your plans no matter what you do.

Unlike Cloud, Sephiroth didn't have his close friends with him to pull him back from the brink, those guys were either dead or messed up by related events.