![]() ![]() Released in 2005 in Japan, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is a theatrical film directed by legendary game designer Tetsuya Nomura that continues the story of the landmark PlayStation RPG, Final Fantasy VII, originally released in 1997. (By June the following year, I’d use some of my middle school graduation money to pick up a legal DVD copy of Advent Children for $20 at the now-vanished Suncoast at the Menlo Park Mall.) Very little of Advent Children makes sense on its own, even if you have played FF7. It was still months before the film’s official release in the U.S. The torrent had English subtitles, albeit fan-made ones. ![]() It wasn’t just the Japanese track that made it unintelligible. How could an animated movie look so good? How could the action and story seem so exciting? I fell in love with Final Fantasy VII right then and there, even if I found it impossible to understand. I was 13, an age when no one knows how to shut up, and I was speechless. This cousin, who had long been the Virgil to my Dante during my descent into gaming culture, was showing me a torrent of Advent Children. The strongest of these recollections finds me inside my cousin’s cramped apartment, sitting on a worn leather couch, knees up and back hunched to better see through the sun’s glare on my cousin’s Sony VAIO laptop. The smoky aroma of Filipino-style barbecue pork and lumpia spring rolls trigger a flood of memories as potently as the ubiquitous sirens of the JCPD. The summer of 2005 is embered in my memory as lazy afternoons spent with extended family in Jersey City at a time long before gentrification took deep root. A bootleg copy of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children changed my life. ![]()
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