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The Final Fantasy 7 remake needs to give flowers the respect they deserveBunches and bunches
Bunches and bunches
Everyone from Taylor Swift to Tyler, The Creator has written a song about flowers. Fancy restaurants scatter them over melting chocolate bombes. Van Gogh even had a crack at painting some once, I believe. And after all, why not? Flowers bloom all around the world, and symbolise so much to so many different cultures.Final Fantasyis far from the only video game series to lean into flower metaphors - but few have done it better.
Most of this centres around Aeris/Aerith Gainsborough, Cloud’s go-to love interest (deal with it, Tifa fans) and a hugely important team member throughout the game. If you’re yet to play Final Fantasy VII and have managed to avoid spoilers for 23 years, you clearly have some amazing willpower and you should use it now to click through to another story. This article goes into heavy spoiler territory.
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
Aeris works as a flower seller in Midgar, an occupation which seems rather innocent and naive on the surface, but actually suggests a lot of resilience. Midgar is not a bountiful, lush locale awash with colour, with flowers nodding on every corner waiting for Aeris to stroll along and pick them at her leisure. It’s a harsh, unfeeling city, technologically advanced and almost the antithesis of nature. Flowers only bloom in a few select areas, and even then it doesn’t seem like Aeris is making a killing selling them.
(Here you might be thinking that working as a flower selling in a place which doesn’t produce many flowers to a populous not interested in buying them is less resilient than it is stupid. But listen: What with the climate being a huge cultural issue of our time, and FFVII’s story dealing with anti-environmentalist corporatism, Aeris’ resilience is more important than ever.)
The most common association with lilies, of course, is death. This is likely the first thing you associate with them, especially in the west where the’re the most popular funerary flower. Aeris famously dies a tragic death in Final Fantasy VII - possibly the most famous death in all of video games - and despite the existence of Phoenix Down, she cannot be revived.
The very fact that these flowers are only found in places associated with Aeris highlights her own power - the power that weallhave - to shape the environment for the better in many ways, however small. As well as all of the symbolic meanings lilies offer, on a more substantive level they require clean environments to thrive.
The very existence of lilies within Midgar represents hope against evil, capitalism and corporate greed. Aeris, much like Cloud (and go on then, Tifa too)arethese lilies; struggling to survive, fighting against forces much stronger than themselves, bringing beauty back to a cold and lifeless world. It is foolish, often pointless, to fight corporations on the climate. But we fight nonetheless.
Though it’s easy to dismiss the splashes of floral colour in the game as a little bit of set dressing, they’re so much more important than that. In the remake, especially with us all so much more conscious of our impact on the environment, Final Fantasy VII needs to give its flowers the respect they deserve.
