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****Translations concerning the plot-related connection between FFVII and
FFX/X-2**** (007)
As some fans of Final Fantasy VII, X and X-2 may or may not know, the worlds
of the two games share a plot-related connection. The connection's existance
was established during an interview with Yoshinori Kitase (lead developer of
the Final Fantasy series) and Kazushige Nojima (the scenario writer of Final
Fantasy VII, Before Crisis, Advent Children, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy
X, Final Fantasy X-2 and the Kingdom Hearts series) in 2002, as featured in
the Final Fantasy X Ultimania Omega guidebook, an official Square-Enix
publication.

This interview established that there would be a connection between the two
worlds, though it didn't detail it. However, based on what was later revealed
to be the connection, it's clear that it had already been conceived, as
Kitase hints at it with his final word on the subject. In 2003, the exact
nature of the concept was finally revealed in the Final Fantasy X-2 Ultimania,
having been hinted toward by a few elements of the game.

Nojima revealed that Shinra of the Gullwings, an Al Bhed child prodigy and
inventor of various machinery, would attempt using the remains of Vegnagun --
the behemoth machina Shuyin tried to destroy Spira with -- to extract life
energy from the Farplane and use it to power machines. Shinra would attempt
doing this as a result of his analysis of the Farplane late in the game.
During this diagnostic, Shinra concluded that there was a great deal of energy
floating around inside the Farplane, and that it was most likely the life
force of Spira, which could be extracted and used as a power source; however,
he concluded that it would take generations to properly implement the idea.

Further of note is that Nojima explained that the Al Bhed entrepeneur Rin also
was interested in extracting mako from the Farplane, and that he provided
Shinra with the funding to make the attempt. For his part, Rin's desire to do
this is revealed during the game should he be uncovered as the culprit behind
covering up the malfunctioning machina disaster on the Mi'hen Highroad.

Nojima went on to say that Shinra's attempts to use Vegnagun's remains failed
and that he was unable to complete the concept of mako-extraction, just as
Shinra had predicted. However, some 1000 years later, once space travel became
possible, Shinra's descendants would go on a voyage to the world of Final
Fantasy VII. There, at some point in the future, they would be successful in
utilizing the concept, and would provide electricity from the Planet for a
price; these descendants would found the Shin-Ra Company of Final Fantasy VII.

The connection would again be hinted toward in the Final Fantasy X-2:
International+Last Mission (released in 2004) game's Last Mission scenario, in
which Rikku revealed that Rin and Shinra had begun working together. Next,
the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega guidebook (released in September, 2005)
also brings forth mention of the concept, and, finally, the connection may
have received further indication through Dirge of Cerberus (released in
January, 2006) and the Advent Children Reunion Files book (released in May,
2006), in which it is established that the Shera airship seen in Advent
Children and Dirge of Cerberus runs on ancient, lost non-mako technology that
Cid discovered. This technology very well may have originally belonged to
Shinra's descendants, as they are the only previous inhabitants of VII's world
indicated to have been in possession of advanced technology, and because the
interior of the Shera bears some aesthetic resemblances to those of the
Fahrenheit and Celsius airships that figure prominently into FFX and FFX-2
(though the Shera's interior bears more of a resemblance to the Celsius').

I will here present the dialogue from Final Fantasy X-2 that hints at the
connection, as well as the interviews and other translations that establish
its existance as part of official Final Fantasy continuity.

***Dialogue with Rin from Final Fantasy X-2***
Rin
"You are suggesting that my decision to upgrade the machina resulted in a
number of casualties... ... and that I tried to cover it up?"

Yuna
"You put the investigation in our hands because we were amateurs. You hoped we
would botch the case."

Yuna
"And then, I kept calling you even though I didn't have any leads."

Yuna
"You would have objected to the meaningless interruptions, if you really
wanted to solve the case."

Rin
"I see. It appears that I have underestimated you, Yuna."

Rikku
"Why, Rin?"

Rin
"If word got out that machina pose a danger, people would fear them and stop
using them."

Paine
"So Yevon's not alone in sweeping things under the rug."

Rin
"I firmly believe that machina are an indispensable part of Spira's
development."

Rin
"Even if there is another incident, I intend to conceal the evidence."

Yuna
"You really think people will follow you that way?"

Rin
"I am not alone in my thinking."

Rin
"We are researching ways to extract the vast energy that sleeps in Spira, and
use it to power machina."

Paine
"You're a jackass."

Rin
"I will take that as a compliment."



***Dialogue with Shinra from Final Fantasy X-2***
Shinra
"Aha..."

Yuna
"What are you looking at?"

Shinra
"Farplane data."

Shinra
"The more I study it, the more fascinating it gets. There's limitless energy
swirling around in there."

Yuna
"Limitless energy?"

Shinra
"The life force that flows through our planet...I think."

Shinra
"With a little work, we could probably extract the energy in a useable form."

Brother
"Sweet!"

Shinra
"Of course, that'd take generations."

Brother
"That's no fun!"

Buddy
"Well, still, it is something worth shooting for."

Yuna
"Think how much Spira would change if we ever got it to work!"

Yuna
"Maybe one day we could build a city full of light, one that never sleeps!"

Shinra
"No doubt about it."



***Dialogue with Rikku from Final Fantasy X-2: International+Last Mission***
Paine
"These days, people are always looking for sunken machina."

Rikku
"Yup-yup!"

Yuna
"Oh? Has Shinra been helping you with that?"

Rikku
"Ahh, now that you bring it up..."

Rikku
"Well, he left the ship and got together with Rin, and what do you think all
that research they've been doing is about?"



***Interview with Yoshinori Kitase and Kazushige Nojima in the Final Fantasy X
Ultimania Omega*** (Page 191)
**FFVII and FFX are connected?!**
--"Previously, with a conversation in the FFX Scenario Ultimania, you made
certain inferences, and since it's been about half a year since then, is there
anything new you'd like to clarify about FFX?"

Kitase
"That's true...... Now that FFX International is out and we're in the future,
I'm in a predicament; it really isn't that hard to think of another story
[set] in that world; room for expansion was left possible there without too
much difficulty, don't you think? Speaking conversely, FFX received a splendid
reception and made us think of adding to it."

Nojima
"After FFVII was finished, we were easily able to add Zack's open[-ended role]
into the International version. But, with X, there was an older story with a
partly-finished world and an opening that this new one could be added to and
[, in doing] so[,] complete it."

Kitase
"So, you could say [in terms of] time, Nojima-san decided to designate it to
act as a sequel to VII, if you follow me."


--"It's a sequel to VII!!"

Kitase
"Well, there was a joke right there. Simply put, in VII's ending, Holy came,
and the next thing you knew, it was over without closing things up, and then
it was the "500 years later" [scene] in the future. There's a large margin
buried there. A margin for the imagination. Nojima-san and Toriyama are going
to be filling something of that with VII, though, while they're at their best
and can do it."


--"So, will it become a sequel to VII's story?"

Nojima
"I have a strong feeling that they're going to be connected."


--"Huh, so VII and X ARE connected?"

Nojima
"Well, there's not many specifics to it. I know that what becomes of people
when they die is among them; you could say that it's basically the same. Both
[concepts came to] function along the same line of thought as I wrote the
stories. Sometimes my thoughts just flow out like that, even though pyreflies
distinctly aren't green."


--"When you speak of the dead becoming [something] green, do you perhaps
[mean]......?"

Nojima
"Yes. In my mind, pyreflies and VII's Lifestream are the same substance."

Kitase
"Nojima-san's even considering making use of an idea like this -- [with] an
addition to the idea of life origin -- in a sequel to FFX International.
That's just a little bit of the thought that's been going into what to do with
VII."

Nojima
"That's right. There's something like the Lifestream [in X's world
also]......."


--"'An addition to the idea of life origin'......does that mean you're going
to revise life origin concepts or something?"

Nojima
"I can't say......it's a secret (laughs)."

Kitase
"It's a surprise with how someone from the story conducts theirself with
regards to the Farplane."



***Interview with FFX-2 creators from the Final Fantasy X-2 Ultimania***
(Page 723)
**"So, what of this child, Shinra......"**
--"Among these latest stories, 'connected' is one of the key words becoming
applicable, isn't it?"

[Daisuke] Watanabe
"I personally like the word 'connected,' but there's one aspect where that
applies well."

Nojima
"During the game's progression, various vague things will be tied together to
reveal it."


--"For example, the name 'Shinra' suggests a connection with VII? There's
[what's said] in the 'Graduation Mission' scenario [ -- 'graduation'
referring to Shinra being soon to leave the Gullwings -- ], and the 'I am not
alone in my thinking' line from the 'Rin's Detective Work' scenario seems to
have some particular significance."

Nojima
"Actually, it does. After quitting the Gullwings, Shinra received enormous
financial support from Rin, and began trying to use Vegnagun to siphon Mako
Energy from the Farplane. But, he is unable to complete the system for
utilizing this energy in his generation, and in the future, when traveling to
distant planets becomes possible, the Shin-Ra Company is founded on another
world, or something like that....... That would happen about 1000 years after
this story, I think."


--"So VII's story is after that?"

Nojima
"Well, you could say the feelings I have are like that. When I think about the
characters, those are the kinds of feelings I already have. Shinra is a good
child, but his descendants are going to end up becoming like the president [of
Shin-Ra] (laughs)."

Watanabe
"With you said about VII, after seeing your episodes with Shinra, one of the
people on the [development] staff said that the first shot of the Bevelle
Underground 'gives the impression of somewhere else.'"

[Motomu] Toriyama
"Certainly; it looks like the opening shot of Midgar in VII."



***Information on Shinra of the Gullwings in the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania
Omega*** (Page 563)
Shinra is a boy who supports the Gullwings, the group which the main
protagonist, Yuna, belongs to. He carries a name that gives him an association
to the Shin-Ra Company, and he is researching a method that could utilize the
energy of "the life force that flows through our planet." The results of this
cannot be seen in FFX-2, but maybe one day his descendants will establish a
"company that supplies the energy of the planet"?

(Accompanying screenshot caption)
The words of Shinra, which can be heard at the end of the story. This world
has something similar to the Lifestream that is worthy of attention.



***Interview with FFVII creators from the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania
Omega*** (Page 571)
--"At E3 (the world's largest game show, which was held in America), as a demo
for the PS3, the opening of FFVII was shown; was its purpose to serve as
something of a preliminary announcement?

Kitase
"Well, in regard to that, please think of it as a mere demonstration. Because
the production period for its imagery was [going to be] so short, we made the
opening of FFVII, as it was easy to represent. Beyond that, there is no
particular deeper meaning.


--"In that case, it's not a remake; when might you be making something to
serve as the direct continuation of FFX-2?"

Kitase
"Producing something like that holds the same problem as a remake [of FFVII],
as our schedule just isn't open for it [right now]."



***Information concerning the Shera and fuel in the Advent Children Reunion
Files book*** (Page 87)
What do they use for fuel in this time period?
"Cloud and the gang certainly aren't using mako anymore, because it drains the
life of the planet. That means they don't use Materia, either. Yuffie collects
them, but that's just because she lives to collect things (laughs). I guess
the airship must be running on some mysterious ancient power source." (Nomura)





****Notes on information in the Advent Children Reunion Files book**** (00 cool
As you, the reader, may or may not know, Final Fantasy VII's direct sequel,
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, has an Ultimania-like book of its own: the
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Reunion Files book published by SoftBank.
This comprehensive book features in-depth information on each character in the
film, interviews with their voice actors, interviews with the film's core
creators, a lengthy production digest of the film, and a wealth of info on
aspects of the film's plot.

I have here collected a lot of the more interesting and notable information
from the book, broken it down into categories, and sorted it accordingly. Be
aware, though, that this is not necessarily everything you personally may find
of interest in the book, and that I'll not be quoting anything from it here,
neither in English or Japanese. I'll simply be paraphrasing. This is because
the book is actually in both English and Japanese -- being the only Final
Fantasy book I know of to be bilingual -- and I recommend it to all fans of
the film who can read either language. As one who owns more than a dozen
official Final Fantasy books, this is absolutely my favorite one.

Without further ado, here's the information from the book:

***Production notes*** (008.1)
-The short CG production by Square's Visual Works department (the project that
eventually became Advent Children) was began in January of 2002. It wasn't
until March of 2003 (when Final Fantasy X-2 was released in Japan) that the
official go-ahead was given to the Advent Children project itself. In other
words, you can say that Advent Children's pre-production began in January of
2002.

-The real world footage from AC's credits and Reminisicence of Final Fantasy
VII was filmed in Hawaii.

-Takeyuki Takeya (the monster and mechanical art designer for the film)
designed Cloud's First Tsurugi sword set used in the film. He says that he
doesn't know what the individual names of the swords are, nor what their
specific attributes are. "First Tsurugi" is, apparently, the name for the
entire set and the completed sword (as most people thought, I believe), and
the swords were just called "the fusion swords" during development because
they weren't given proper names.

-Takeyuki Takeya also designed Bahamut Sin (whose design he said was partly
inspired by Jomon pottery) and the Shera airship.

-Yusuke Naora designed the Velvet Nightmares and the Dual Hound (Loz and
Yazoo's weapons).

-Nomura said he didn't do the designs for the weapons, creatures, and the
Shera airship because he wanted to focus on directing.

-Yusuke Naora's location design of the shell structure in the Forgotten
Capital (Kadaj's base) was the first piece drawn in the film's pre-production.

-Nojima said that he got the idea for Geostigma from a plot element originally
intended for Final Fantasy X, but that wasn't implemented. The idea was that
Yuna would have been going around curing diseases all over Spira. He said that
since he needed a plot element to cause Cloud to need to protect people
weaker than him, he came up with Geostigma.

-Nojima said that he set AC 2 years after FFVII because it's a pretty long
time, but also short enough for the past to still be lingering in people's
minds. He also said it was long enough for Marlene to have probably started
talking a lot.

-Nomura had Cloud take down Kadaj without really grunting or showing any signs
of straining himself so that when he was grunting a lot during his fight with
Sephiroth and displaying lots of signs of fatigue it would emphasise how much
more powerful Sephiroth was.

-When designing Sephiroth for the film, they took various steps to make him
seem like something other than an ordinary human, a supernatural entity. For
his appearance, they gave him slanted eyes. In rendering him, they never
showed him blink. For his lines, Nojima gave him a majestic style of speech
that would suggest that his mentality had ascended beyond that of ordinary
humans.

-Nomura said that since Barret is compared to Mr. T so often, they
deliberately went out of their way to make him look different from him in
Advent Children (yes, he actually said this).

-At one point, the development team was unsure of why Sephiroth would appear
to fight Cloud, and were only certain that he must appear for a final battle
with him. They considered various ideas, including Sephiroth only being
visible to Cloud, but ultimately went with what we see in the finished film
(Kadaj's fusion with Jenova's cells).

-The Madhouse animation studio was selected to create Last Order because they
had been used on the anime trailer for Before Crisis, and because the
company's president was very enthusiastic about the idea of a FFVII animated
feature, and frequently payed visits to Nomura at SE's offices to discuss the
idea with him. Because of the enormous support Madhouse was expressing for the
project, they were a shoe-in for the job.

-Despite how simple a garment it was, Cid's t-shirt was apparently an
extremely difficult piece to animate realistically. Initially, it came off
looking rubbery.

-Apparently Yazoo's hair was a pain in the a** to animate.

-The original promotional video for AC shown at the Tokyo Game Show in 2003
was all of the development footage that Nomura and his people had at the time.
Since they knew they would be unveiling the project only 6 months after it had
finally gotten an official go-ahead, Nomura wanted to pack the preview with
action shots and then focus on developing everything else around them later.

-The English version's April 3, 2006 premiere is mentioned, as is the fact
that it was met to a thunderous warm welcome. This is probably what prompted
the delay of the book from May 2 to May 22. It's not explicitly stated, but
I'm guessing that it was this large show of support from English-reading fans
that made SE or SoftBank decide to include English translations of all of the
Japanese text in the book (with the exception of a little bit of the
production credits in the back). This was the first time this was done with an
FF book to my knowledge.

-Mideel was originally going to be used as the film's therapeutic location,
but the development team decided to create Healin and utilize it instead
because of how far Mideel is from Midgar/Edge.

-It was the "Deep Dive" hidden FMV from the original Kingdom Hearts that
sparked a desire in Nomura to try making an even more cool-looking battle
scene in a CG film in the future. He had a specific desire to use FFVII as the
source material, and being that Visual Works had wanted to make a FFVII CG
production anyway, once Nomura agreed to go on the project as its director,
things gradually took shape.

-In initial sketches, Kadaj was referred to as "Lost Name" because he didn't
have a name yet.

-The original subtitle of the film was going to be "Reunion," but Nomura felt
that the word didn't convey the sense of "coming back again" well enough, so
he did some research and found the word "advent," which is often used to mean
"second coming." Nojima, for his part, wanted "children" in the title, so the
two words were combined. Nojima says he feels that the title does a good job
of expressing that FFVII is back and that Sephiroth is going to come back
during the film.

-Nomura said back around the time of Parasite Eve's production, he had come up
with an idea for a game that involved a cat and a dog searching for their
missing master. The cat would ride on the dog's back. This idea is what led
Nomura to think of sticking Cait Sith on Red XIII's back after they decided
not to use Cait Sith's Moogle mount.

-Nomura says he gave Denzel wavy hair to make him more unique since it's not a
common trait with FFVII's characters.

-The Shadow Creepers' heads were based on crows' skulls.

-At one point they considered having Yazoo and Loz holding the Shadow Creepers
from the beginning on leashes while they rode their motorcycles, but decided
not to.

-Originally, the scene with Kadaj talking to Aerith after Sephiroth fell
wasn't included. However, they decided to add this scene in late in the
production because they wanted to give Kadaj a scene of salvation, as they
felt that he was a character who needed to be saved too.

I just have to say the theory of FFVII and FFX being related are ludicrous! Pure Dribble! Utter nonsense! Okay I'm done.

I'm just suprised on how so many of the other FF actors/actresses wanted parts in FF7.... Very amusing....