The Goddesses of Final Fantasy
Dec. 26th, 2011 07:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ff_metaTo be honest, especially with revelations and canon changes/additions since I wrote this, I'm posting this more for general amusement than anything else.
Back nearly a decade ago, as a soon-to-graduate senior in college, I took a combined Religions/Women's Studies course about goddesses. Of course there are two ways for a class like that to go. Luckily, it ended up being a blast. An educational blast, of course, but a blast nonetheless. It often involved things like fanfic and the instructor giving us grenadine to make us all immortal (at least for the duration of class).
For our final paper, we had the option of writing a non-academic paper on a goddess-related subject of our choosing. I am fairly sure that meant 'it is May, please write something that fills a few pages and enjoy getting an 'A' on it, we both have better things to do.' I had played Final Fantasy VII the semester before and was just finding out about all of the other FF games.
It is a good thing that cites weren't required... Most of them would have been Geocities or 'my friend told me'. Which is also to say that there may be some errors or points of contention - I'm certainly not going to stand behind it at this point. (But I might point and laugh.)
Anyway, enough with the introduction...
The Goddesses of Final Fantasy
I'm either going to be your most favorite or least favorite character. You'll love me or hate me. Or perhaps you'll start off not giving a shit and then, halfway through the first disc, I may end up growing on you. That's only because I've proven myself to be useful somehow. I mean, you've already figured out who was useful and who wasn't at this phase of activity, so if you even remember my name and something about my abilities without digging through your guidebook, well, I've done something right.
The more I think about it, it totally depends on who you are as to how much you'll like me. Do you think I'm cute? Or am I in the way of uniting two characters truly in love? Well?
Hey, set down your controller and think about this. And whether you like 'em or not, stop staring at my disproportionate pixel tits. I didn't design them. Someone in Japan did.
Excuse me... Are you listening?
Oh, have I forgotten to introduce myself? Does it matter? I'm rather generic at this point. The only thing that separates me from the video game heroines who've come before is probably the color of my hair and my cup size.
Hang on, I'm going to take another step back and explain a little more.
Final Fantasy VII was the first FF made for the Sony Playstation. At the time, it was an absolutely revolutionary game and though some of the base graphics were still substandard, its intricate plot more than made up for that. It is a rare game that is still engaging and entertaining after six years and is still many players' favorite of the series.
And while the game seems to have a male hero and villain, under the surface, the women run the show. They aren't even stuck with the usual duties of black/white mage/summoner. In FFVII, anyone can be a magic user of any sort, putting everything on equal ground from the very beginning.
Still, it's all about the ladies. The female lead is a human-esque (the difference is never truly explained besides a slight magical edge) woman named Aerith. She's the last of the Cetra, or Ancients, who colonized the planet in the beginning. She's actually no more than half-Cetra, but no one seems to make note of that fact. The most interesting thing about Aerith is the fact that unlike the normal 'deaths' the characters die on the battlefield (only to be revived with a mystic item from the menu), she dies a sad and permanent death at the end of the first disc.
Aerith is very much the girl-next-door, sweet and giggly with healing abilities and an army chasing her down for medical experiments. Okay, so she's not exactly the girl next door. That'd be Tifa, who literally was Cloud's (the male lead) neighbor as a child. She's a trained martial artist with powerful attacks but seems to suffer from having a chest with its own zip code. Besides that, once Aerith is killed, she seems to try to step into the role of love-interest for Cloud, who is one crazy bastard hung up on one thing - the game's male villain. Some players don't like Tifa solely for this reason and tend to swap her out of the active party whenever she isn't a required character. Tifa does, however, serve for comic relief, as, when killed in battle, the only thing visible over the menu at the bottom of the screen are her oversized breasts.
The final playable female character is a ninja princess named Yuffie. She's a secret character that requires extra hours of game play to hunt down and isn't necessary to the plot (though she does have an entertaining subquest available). She's the clichéd teen character who's hyperactive and nosy. However, she's redeemed by also getting motion sick, like Cloud, who dispenses accurate advice at one point to her as she's near-keeling on an airship.
Still, while the playable character women are interesting, it's the non-playable character and villain women who steal the spotlight. One of the first ones a player will meet is Jenova. Or... part of Jenova, to be precise. Her beheaded body sits in a tank in one of the first buildings visited. Of course, that has nothing to do with her being dead. All the contrary, she's very alive and commanding her 'son' Sephiroth to do her bidding. Of course, he's supposed to be dead too, but that means nothing at this point.
Sephiroth is eventually revealed to be both Cloud's childhood idol and the main villain of the game. The final battle is against him. But really, he's doing it all for Jenova, who he thinks is his mother. She’s not technically his mother, but he is partially made from her.
See, Sephiroth is technically a science experiment. And while he’s one heck of a lot cooler than a model volcano, he’s way more unstable too. He was raised as a ward of the corrupt conglomerate that runs the world and trained to be the best soldier there is. He doesn’t know he has parents, he’s just been told his mother’s name was Jenova. So at one point, in a flashback, all hell breaks loose, Sephiroth absconds with Jenova’s head (hence the body in the tank later), then is sort of killed. But no one beyond Aerith seems to stay dead for long. And even Aerith doesn’t seem to be dead. She’s out there floating around in the Lifestream, a slightly abstract idea about where things go when they die and where life comes from as a fluid motion. It’s like a spirit world that’s in constant flux.
Anyway, Sephiroth’s true father is a mad scientist and absolute jerk named Hojo. He gets slaughtered by Cloud & co. towards the end of the game which is truly one of the feel good moments of the entire thing. Or, at least, Hojo could be Sephiroth’s father. There are dissenting views on this because another man was in love with his mother, Lucrecia.
Lucrecia is a good scientist, just trying to make the world a better place. It’s assumed she died from complications after Sephiroth’s birth, but she shows up later too, full of Jenova cells but resisting them somehow.
She was injected with Jenova cells while carrying Sephiroth and apparently he was also injected in utero. It was all an attempt to create the perfect being, and while Sephiroth has more sex appeal than a gaggle of male strippers, he’s not exactly mentally stable.
This could be based on the fact that all assumptions the scientists had about Jenova were wrong. They thought she was a Cetra, but no, she was the ‘Crisis From The Sky’, a creature who tried to destroy the Cetra and the planet.
But, back to the plot. Sephiroth is being controlled by his ‘Mother’, and is, in turn, occasionally controlling Cloud. There’s several theories in the game to explain that, the most likely that Cloud is also part Jenova, but not to the extent Sephiroth is. It’s rather entertaining for the player to be stuck with a main character who’s trying to kill off his own party. However, following through on that isn’t an option. When Sephiroth decides to control Cloud (who’s still playable), he goes after Aerith. And when that fails (not that most players don’t try now and then), Sephiroth appears from nowhere, as he always does, then slices the smiling and praying Aerith through the midsection. Before the player can deal with the loss of one of the more useful characters (Aerith was the closest thing to the series’ earlier white mages), Sephiroth throws a chunk of Jenova to the ground that turns into a monster that’ll probably obliterate the player at least once, forcing them to go through the same darned scene at least twice. He’s done this before - random pieces of Jenova cast to the ground have the amazing ability to become monsters on their own, each very powerful.
The other female villains of the game include a pair of women working for the corrupt conglomerate that gets taken down near the end of the game. One of these, Scarlet, is best known for her revealing pixel dress and annoying laugh. The most interaction the player gets with her involves a slapping match while controlling Tifa. Still, her machines make life for the good guys difficult more than once.
The last female character is a stereotypical blonde ditz named Elena. But she could kick just about anyone’s ass and she does so a couple times too. She’s generally cast into the role of the character who leaks information to the good guys, mainly because at times the plot is so damned confusion, in game help is absolutely necessary.
In the end, it all comes down to two forms of magic that can be classified as black and white, or, in their proper names, Meteor, which will destroy the world, and Holy, which will save it. Aerith has had Holy all along, but no one ever knows it and it’s lost when she’s killed. The good guys retrieve Meteor in hopes of keeping it away from Sephiroth. Of course, since Sephiroth has the amusing ability to control Cloud, well, it’s only a matter of time before he offers the black orb to his former idol. Twice. And the second time it’s not one of the clone/projection Sephiroth’s that have somehow been created (another thing that has more than one explanation) that Cloud delivers it to, it’s a very naked battered Sephiroth encased in crystal. At this point, the player deems this game to be ‘just not right’, and Cloud stops being a playable character for a good long time anyway, which is okay because the bastard is crazy.
Anyway, back to Aerith, who may be dead but is still doing her best to save the planet from Jenova. By the end of the game, as Meteor is crashing down from the sky, well, Holy fails. Things die. Shit gets destroyed and the player is wondering what the hell is going on. Eventually the planet rises up to save itself, but damn, the female power of Holy just couldn’t pull it off.
Or is it only because another female power is stronger? What the hell has happened to Jenova? Well, one of the final boss battles is against a last form of the creature, but is that truly her end? The good guys still need to go through a few long and almost overdone battles with Sephiroth, who, without the influence of Jenova, should have converted back to a slightly more sane version of himself. However, as he’s basically achieved his goal, did he need to? He kept yammering about getting godhood from all of this. But by destroying the planet, what’s he going to be a god over? The last real battle feature Sephiroth as a seraphim, one of the highest of angels. And instead of dying at the end of the battle, he merely dissipates into the sky. Sort of like he’s been able to randomly appear and project himself during the entire game. Both he and Jenova can easily change their forms - Sephiroth even takes on Tifa’s form at one point (yet does not fall forward with that cleavage, oddly enough), and Jenova’s final form would cause Gimbutas to have a field day.
So who’s controlling who? Sephiroth has given control over to Jenova, his ‘Mother’ (which is correct in a sense), but still seems to be in control of his own clones/projections and Cloud. He seems to be a very devoted son, doing all he can to thwart the good guys and destroy things. However, he seems to have moments of extreme clarity in which he only babbles information to Cloud & co. and even occasionally helps them. Either he can break away from being the pawn of his mother or he’s only letting her think she’s in control.
But it doesn’t matter. As a team, they should be unstoppable. And since the game ends with the planet struggling against Meteor, the winner is never really clear. Sure there’s an epilogue 500 years post game, but it just shows a tiny bit of life on the planet, and no humans. Who is the ruler of that world?
So who is Jenova? The Cetra see her as a threat, yet she seems to only be a force of change, something that, along with her virgin-born son (surrogate-born) is going to cleanse the planet of those who seek to destroy it (really, the humans in this game are more than looting resources). Are the good guys really the good guys? Or are they fighting a losing battle with the inevitable?
If Jenova, who may as well be Jehovah - the base is the same - sent her only son to try to save a selected few (so Cloud wasn't the best choice for apostle, not his fault) before wiping out the failure that was humanity.
There are many myths of groups of 'Watcher' angels sent to earth over the years to keep tabs on humanity. Some of these managed to breed in with mortals, creating a very similar race yet who were still different. That's very much like the more mystical Cetra who seem to be in tune with the planet.
However, one angel cannot stand up to the great power, and in the end, Aerith fails because she knows not where she came from and tries to stop what needs to be.
As for Sephiroth, he thinks he's Cetra based on incorrect observations about Jenova, but with Jenova as the highest power, even as her accidental son, he's so much more than a Cetra (his powers at the end are phenomenal, the only way to destroy him involves using summoned monsters from the spirit world).
Besides pulling from Western religion, the game and characters can be translated a variety of ways. There are entire websites dedicated to deconstructing the game. And while most of it is easy, there are small facts like the game not being technically complete due to company budget and time problems that leave a few things up in the air.
Still, whichever way it's looked at, the game makes an attempt to have strong female characters only to eventually fail by either shoving them out of the picture (like Lucrecia, who appears once in a flashback and once in game), killing them off, or showing them as the epitome of evil.
Other Final Fantasy games stick with similar themes. The grand evil of Final Fantasy 8 is a succession of sorceresses who use males as their pawns. Final Fantasy 9 has an evil queen who is usurped only by an androgynous creature in a battle bikini. All of this is after the female lead has been thoroughly tortured, of course. And Final Fantasy 10 has a young woman ready to die for her cause, sure it the only way. She’s alive at the end, but she’s lost much in the process anyway.
And in the alternate universe game, Kingdom Hearts, guess who appears - Cloud, Sephiroth, and Aerith. And while both male characters are worthy opponents, Aerith has been regaled to a role as an academic instead of as a fighter. She may be the brains of the group, but when dealing with two still-crazy enemies, what good is that? She’s had her power totally taken away again. She may be alive, but with what?
In the world of Final Fantasy VII, it’s neither a man’s nor a woman’s world - it just depends on who holds the power at any particular moment, whether it be Cetra mage, insane fighter, illegitimate son of Jenova, or the alien goddess herself.
Back nearly a decade ago, as a soon-to-graduate senior in college, I took a combined Religions/Women's Studies course about goddesses. Of course there are two ways for a class like that to go. Luckily, it ended up being a blast. An educational blast, of course, but a blast nonetheless. It often involved things like fanfic and the instructor giving us grenadine to make us all immortal (at least for the duration of class).
For our final paper, we had the option of writing a non-academic paper on a goddess-related subject of our choosing. I am fairly sure that meant 'it is May, please write something that fills a few pages and enjoy getting an 'A' on it, we both have better things to do.' I had played Final Fantasy VII the semester before and was just finding out about all of the other FF games.
It is a good thing that cites weren't required... Most of them would have been Geocities or 'my friend told me'. Which is also to say that there may be some errors or points of contention - I'm certainly not going to stand behind it at this point. (But I might point and laugh.)
Anyway, enough with the introduction...
The Goddesses of Final Fantasy
I'm either going to be your most favorite or least favorite character. You'll love me or hate me. Or perhaps you'll start off not giving a shit and then, halfway through the first disc, I may end up growing on you. That's only because I've proven myself to be useful somehow. I mean, you've already figured out who was useful and who wasn't at this phase of activity, so if you even remember my name and something about my abilities without digging through your guidebook, well, I've done something right.
The more I think about it, it totally depends on who you are as to how much you'll like me. Do you think I'm cute? Or am I in the way of uniting two characters truly in love? Well?
Hey, set down your controller and think about this. And whether you like 'em or not, stop staring at my disproportionate pixel tits. I didn't design them. Someone in Japan did.
Excuse me... Are you listening?
Oh, have I forgotten to introduce myself? Does it matter? I'm rather generic at this point. The only thing that separates me from the video game heroines who've come before is probably the color of my hair and my cup size.
Hang on, I'm going to take another step back and explain a little more.
Final Fantasy VII was the first FF made for the Sony Playstation. At the time, it was an absolutely revolutionary game and though some of the base graphics were still substandard, its intricate plot more than made up for that. It is a rare game that is still engaging and entertaining after six years and is still many players' favorite of the series.
And while the game seems to have a male hero and villain, under the surface, the women run the show. They aren't even stuck with the usual duties of black/white mage/summoner. In FFVII, anyone can be a magic user of any sort, putting everything on equal ground from the very beginning.
Still, it's all about the ladies. The female lead is a human-esque (the difference is never truly explained besides a slight magical edge) woman named Aerith. She's the last of the Cetra, or Ancients, who colonized the planet in the beginning. She's actually no more than half-Cetra, but no one seems to make note of that fact. The most interesting thing about Aerith is the fact that unlike the normal 'deaths' the characters die on the battlefield (only to be revived with a mystic item from the menu), she dies a sad and permanent death at the end of the first disc.
Aerith is very much the girl-next-door, sweet and giggly with healing abilities and an army chasing her down for medical experiments. Okay, so she's not exactly the girl next door. That'd be Tifa, who literally was Cloud's (the male lead) neighbor as a child. She's a trained martial artist with powerful attacks but seems to suffer from having a chest with its own zip code. Besides that, once Aerith is killed, she seems to try to step into the role of love-interest for Cloud, who is one crazy bastard hung up on one thing - the game's male villain. Some players don't like Tifa solely for this reason and tend to swap her out of the active party whenever she isn't a required character. Tifa does, however, serve for comic relief, as, when killed in battle, the only thing visible over the menu at the bottom of the screen are her oversized breasts.
The final playable female character is a ninja princess named Yuffie. She's a secret character that requires extra hours of game play to hunt down and isn't necessary to the plot (though she does have an entertaining subquest available). She's the clichéd teen character who's hyperactive and nosy. However, she's redeemed by also getting motion sick, like Cloud, who dispenses accurate advice at one point to her as she's near-keeling on an airship.
Still, while the playable character women are interesting, it's the non-playable character and villain women who steal the spotlight. One of the first ones a player will meet is Jenova. Or... part of Jenova, to be precise. Her beheaded body sits in a tank in one of the first buildings visited. Of course, that has nothing to do with her being dead. All the contrary, she's very alive and commanding her 'son' Sephiroth to do her bidding. Of course, he's supposed to be dead too, but that means nothing at this point.
Sephiroth is eventually revealed to be both Cloud's childhood idol and the main villain of the game. The final battle is against him. But really, he's doing it all for Jenova, who he thinks is his mother. She’s not technically his mother, but he is partially made from her.
See, Sephiroth is technically a science experiment. And while he’s one heck of a lot cooler than a model volcano, he’s way more unstable too. He was raised as a ward of the corrupt conglomerate that runs the world and trained to be the best soldier there is. He doesn’t know he has parents, he’s just been told his mother’s name was Jenova. So at one point, in a flashback, all hell breaks loose, Sephiroth absconds with Jenova’s head (hence the body in the tank later), then is sort of killed. But no one beyond Aerith seems to stay dead for long. And even Aerith doesn’t seem to be dead. She’s out there floating around in the Lifestream, a slightly abstract idea about where things go when they die and where life comes from as a fluid motion. It’s like a spirit world that’s in constant flux.
Anyway, Sephiroth’s true father is a mad scientist and absolute jerk named Hojo. He gets slaughtered by Cloud & co. towards the end of the game which is truly one of the feel good moments of the entire thing. Or, at least, Hojo could be Sephiroth’s father. There are dissenting views on this because another man was in love with his mother, Lucrecia.
Lucrecia is a good scientist, just trying to make the world a better place. It’s assumed she died from complications after Sephiroth’s birth, but she shows up later too, full of Jenova cells but resisting them somehow.
She was injected with Jenova cells while carrying Sephiroth and apparently he was also injected in utero. It was all an attempt to create the perfect being, and while Sephiroth has more sex appeal than a gaggle of male strippers, he’s not exactly mentally stable.
This could be based on the fact that all assumptions the scientists had about Jenova were wrong. They thought she was a Cetra, but no, she was the ‘Crisis From The Sky’, a creature who tried to destroy the Cetra and the planet.
But, back to the plot. Sephiroth is being controlled by his ‘Mother’, and is, in turn, occasionally controlling Cloud. There’s several theories in the game to explain that, the most likely that Cloud is also part Jenova, but not to the extent Sephiroth is. It’s rather entertaining for the player to be stuck with a main character who’s trying to kill off his own party. However, following through on that isn’t an option. When Sephiroth decides to control Cloud (who’s still playable), he goes after Aerith. And when that fails (not that most players don’t try now and then), Sephiroth appears from nowhere, as he always does, then slices the smiling and praying Aerith through the midsection. Before the player can deal with the loss of one of the more useful characters (Aerith was the closest thing to the series’ earlier white mages), Sephiroth throws a chunk of Jenova to the ground that turns into a monster that’ll probably obliterate the player at least once, forcing them to go through the same darned scene at least twice. He’s done this before - random pieces of Jenova cast to the ground have the amazing ability to become monsters on their own, each very powerful.
The other female villains of the game include a pair of women working for the corrupt conglomerate that gets taken down near the end of the game. One of these, Scarlet, is best known for her revealing pixel dress and annoying laugh. The most interaction the player gets with her involves a slapping match while controlling Tifa. Still, her machines make life for the good guys difficult more than once.
The last female character is a stereotypical blonde ditz named Elena. But she could kick just about anyone’s ass and she does so a couple times too. She’s generally cast into the role of the character who leaks information to the good guys, mainly because at times the plot is so damned confusion, in game help is absolutely necessary.
In the end, it all comes down to two forms of magic that can be classified as black and white, or, in their proper names, Meteor, which will destroy the world, and Holy, which will save it. Aerith has had Holy all along, but no one ever knows it and it’s lost when she’s killed. The good guys retrieve Meteor in hopes of keeping it away from Sephiroth. Of course, since Sephiroth has the amusing ability to control Cloud, well, it’s only a matter of time before he offers the black orb to his former idol. Twice. And the second time it’s not one of the clone/projection Sephiroth’s that have somehow been created (another thing that has more than one explanation) that Cloud delivers it to, it’s a very naked battered Sephiroth encased in crystal. At this point, the player deems this game to be ‘just not right’, and Cloud stops being a playable character for a good long time anyway, which is okay because the bastard is crazy.
Anyway, back to Aerith, who may be dead but is still doing her best to save the planet from Jenova. By the end of the game, as Meteor is crashing down from the sky, well, Holy fails. Things die. Shit gets destroyed and the player is wondering what the hell is going on. Eventually the planet rises up to save itself, but damn, the female power of Holy just couldn’t pull it off.
Or is it only because another female power is stronger? What the hell has happened to Jenova? Well, one of the final boss battles is against a last form of the creature, but is that truly her end? The good guys still need to go through a few long and almost overdone battles with Sephiroth, who, without the influence of Jenova, should have converted back to a slightly more sane version of himself. However, as he’s basically achieved his goal, did he need to? He kept yammering about getting godhood from all of this. But by destroying the planet, what’s he going to be a god over? The last real battle feature Sephiroth as a seraphim, one of the highest of angels. And instead of dying at the end of the battle, he merely dissipates into the sky. Sort of like he’s been able to randomly appear and project himself during the entire game. Both he and Jenova can easily change their forms - Sephiroth even takes on Tifa’s form at one point (yet does not fall forward with that cleavage, oddly enough), and Jenova’s final form would cause Gimbutas to have a field day.
So who’s controlling who? Sephiroth has given control over to Jenova, his ‘Mother’ (which is correct in a sense), but still seems to be in control of his own clones/projections and Cloud. He seems to be a very devoted son, doing all he can to thwart the good guys and destroy things. However, he seems to have moments of extreme clarity in which he only babbles information to Cloud & co. and even occasionally helps them. Either he can break away from being the pawn of his mother or he’s only letting her think she’s in control.
But it doesn’t matter. As a team, they should be unstoppable. And since the game ends with the planet struggling against Meteor, the winner is never really clear. Sure there’s an epilogue 500 years post game, but it just shows a tiny bit of life on the planet, and no humans. Who is the ruler of that world?
So who is Jenova? The Cetra see her as a threat, yet she seems to only be a force of change, something that, along with her virgin-born son (surrogate-born) is going to cleanse the planet of those who seek to destroy it (really, the humans in this game are more than looting resources). Are the good guys really the good guys? Or are they fighting a losing battle with the inevitable?
If Jenova, who may as well be Jehovah - the base is the same - sent her only son to try to save a selected few (so Cloud wasn't the best choice for apostle, not his fault) before wiping out the failure that was humanity.
There are many myths of groups of 'Watcher' angels sent to earth over the years to keep tabs on humanity. Some of these managed to breed in with mortals, creating a very similar race yet who were still different. That's very much like the more mystical Cetra who seem to be in tune with the planet.
However, one angel cannot stand up to the great power, and in the end, Aerith fails because she knows not where she came from and tries to stop what needs to be.
As for Sephiroth, he thinks he's Cetra based on incorrect observations about Jenova, but with Jenova as the highest power, even as her accidental son, he's so much more than a Cetra (his powers at the end are phenomenal, the only way to destroy him involves using summoned monsters from the spirit world).
Besides pulling from Western religion, the game and characters can be translated a variety of ways. There are entire websites dedicated to deconstructing the game. And while most of it is easy, there are small facts like the game not being technically complete due to company budget and time problems that leave a few things up in the air.
Still, whichever way it's looked at, the game makes an attempt to have strong female characters only to eventually fail by either shoving them out of the picture (like Lucrecia, who appears once in a flashback and once in game), killing them off, or showing them as the epitome of evil.
Other Final Fantasy games stick with similar themes. The grand evil of Final Fantasy 8 is a succession of sorceresses who use males as their pawns. Final Fantasy 9 has an evil queen who is usurped only by an androgynous creature in a battle bikini. All of this is after the female lead has been thoroughly tortured, of course. And Final Fantasy 10 has a young woman ready to die for her cause, sure it the only way. She’s alive at the end, but she’s lost much in the process anyway.
And in the alternate universe game, Kingdom Hearts, guess who appears - Cloud, Sephiroth, and Aerith. And while both male characters are worthy opponents, Aerith has been regaled to a role as an academic instead of as a fighter. She may be the brains of the group, but when dealing with two still-crazy enemies, what good is that? She’s had her power totally taken away again. She may be alive, but with what?
In the world of Final Fantasy VII, it’s neither a man’s nor a woman’s world - it just depends on who holds the power at any particular moment, whether it be Cetra mage, insane fighter, illegitimate son of Jenova, or the alien goddess herself.
