Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is the sequel to the critical acclaimed ‘Final Fantasy VII’. Set two years after the events of Final Fantasy VII, Midgar have become a ruin and the remaining survivors live around the outskirts and try to build a new city, named Edge. But there is a strange disease that has arisen named ‘Geostigma’, which many citizens have been affected by. Then enters Cloud Strife, an ex-mercenary who now works as a courier for the ‘Strife Delivery Service’, and whom was the main character of Final Fantasy VII. During his delivery, he gets ambushed by three mysterious female, I mean male, villains who are planning something devious. Cloud wants to know what they are planning.
Honestly, Geostigma is a horribly bad plot device. It’s as if it was thought up at the last second and integrated into the film horribly. It does have an explanation, but it’s a pretty predictable one and something that Square-Enix would do to try and make this film interesting. Except it wasn’t, not to this extent. Advent Children was planned to be a 23 minute OVA about someone requesting a message to Cloud. And Nomura laid his poisonous, decaying fingers onto it. So plot development has failed there.
But the character has to make up for it, right? Well, I was wishing the characters would be as interesting as they were in Final Fantasy VII. Just at least by a half. Sadly, that isn’t the case. Cloud Strife hasn’t evolved at ALL since the end of Final Fantasy VII. For two years, he has been stuck into this self-blaming, one-dimensional character that hasn’t really got much of a personality. I preferred Cloud before the ‘event’ happened, which transformed him into this. Tifa is basically there for emotional support, trying to bring ‘Cloud’ out of his self-blame state. Then we have new character Denzel, an orphan child with geostigma and who is desperate to become better. He isn’t as bad as I thought now that I think about it. And let’s move onto the three villains. Huzzah.
Loz – Cry baby who want his mother. Honestly, I think the character IS supposed to be a woman, despite his physique.
Yazoo - …there’s nothing you can find annoying about him. He is emotionless and that’s what I like in an evil villain
Kadaj – Honestly, he is the most interesting villain of the trio. Despite his feminine look, which I don’t get since Nomura is WAY obsessed with them, he is pretty much an okay character
The rest are subjected to pointless cameos, which don’t improve or add to the film, except they are there for fanservice.
I do like the soundtrack, but it’s expected. Final Fantasy never really fails in the soundtrack department. I mean, come on, it’s Nobuo Uematsu, he is a legend as far as I’m concerned. Not only does he made really great music, but he also made a worthy remake of the ‘One Winged Angel’. I never really found out why it’s all that great to be honest. But I listening it to it.
Animation-wise, there are times where it feels far too grey or dark and it becomes dull. Final Fantasy VII was bright despite the dark times it was in and even inside Midgar. It is great animation nevertheless, because of the tremendous amount of work that was put into making a great CGI film. One of the Key locations is The City of the Ancients (Forgotten City), which I find marvelous, especially the water effects inside it. And the character models are greatly detailed and would be excellent if they were used as in-game graphics. I think they focused so much on the nice graphics that they forgot about the storyline.
Actually, everything about the film is utter fanservice. That said as a fan of Final Fantasy VII, I wish they didn’t answer the pleading call of rabid fans that spend their whole life commenting on forums, creating fanfics to try and continue the story in their bad-grammar style. Honestly, the first draft of it has potential and I would have been happy with 23 minutes of it. But now we have a dreadful film with a dreadful climax which I find to be badly-written and executed.
Summary
Square-Enix have ruined a classic game with the follow-up, Advent Children. It hardly resolves everything, has ludicrous new characters which are randomly thrown in, made the main character broken BEYOND recovery and is just fanservice. Yes, IT IS FOR FANS. I doubt anyone else would want to watch this film who has no knowledge of FF7 save for Nobuo Uematsu or breathtaking CGI.
They have focused so much on art that everything else just fall apart.
3/10
Review by Chrono Mizaki
