Each Final Fantasy title has something unique about it, the setting, the tropes even the cultures they create within the narrative. However each titles has a unique underlying theme and Final Fantasy IX’s in my opinion is the quest for purpose wonderfully packaged in a setting comparable to a steampunk European fairytale.
So first of all there’s a rule for Final Fantasy, your first is your favourite, Final Fantasy IX was my first. It is my favourite unequivocally. I wouldn’t be working in film or studying it if I hadn’t found this game when I was 9 in Tesco, it genuinely means that much to me and hopefully I’ll get that to come to across in this blog.
So examining the tropes and archetypes, our two lead protagonists embody generic archetypal characters as well as an archetypal romance storyline Princess and the pauper, however it is reimagined in the way the characters behave with Garnet/Dagger’s determination to be a Queen worthy of her people and Zidane’s determination for Garnet to see him as something other than a rogue, and perhaps even as a decent person.
Each character was designed with a quote in mind to summarise their character and their personal journey through the story, and Zidane has always stood out, because despite his background as an actor and thief he is incredibly empathetic and moral. Crime is a job not a way of life, and he goes out of his way to help people, most notably Garnet who he falls in love with at first site. He is established as an empathetic and loving person with a foul mouth, well read and intelligent, he lacks the etiquette to be considered ‘noble’ in the classical sense but he always tries to be better than he was the day before. Watching him relationship with Garnet and the other members of the cast develop offers a beautifully well written dive into a young man out of place. Watching as he comes to terms with the possibility that he and Garnet are truly star crossed lovers that can never be together, yet still running to her side without a moment’s hesitation and seeing him fall into despair when confronted with the destiny he was engineered for – destroying the world he calls homes and dooming his friends and loved ones only to have his and Garnet’s roles reversed as she saves him from himself is a wonderful masterclass in storytelling and reworking classic tropes to appeal to wider audience is amazing.
Destiny is also a recurring theme, with Garnet being destined to summon the holy Eidolon Alexander, Zidane meant to become Gaia’s doom and the 8 year old Black mage created as a living weapon. Final Fantasy IX effectively makes the innocent guilty, the heroic villainous and the defenceless powerful, enabling character arcs and development that are accurate representations of young adults/teens discovering their purpose in the world and coming to terms with their places in it.
The exploration of loss is also important with each character experiencing it and having to deal with it in their own ways. Zidane suffers the loss of a close friend early on, Garnet loses her mother and shortly after her coronation her nation is attacked and she fails in her destiny to summon the holy Eidolon. The 8 year old Vivi has lost his Grandpa and is overwhelmed with a sense of nihilism in the face of an uncertain life span as a weapon and his counterpart the 6 year old Eiko has lost every member of her family is left with nothing but the group and her pet moogle Mog… who dies. Furthermore there is one other standout loss that is often overlooked in Freya, who has been journeying across the world searching for her lover. Through the course of the story she loses her homeland, fails to defend the last refuge of her people and subsequently finds her lover only to discover he has amnesia and doesn’t even remember her – a fate she finds worth than the possibility of him being dead.
misunderstanding are a major theme, with Zidane and Garnet’s relationship throughout being riddled them, with bystanders automatically hating Vivi and Amarant’s silence and size often used to profile him as a bully and dangerous simply because he doesn’t go out of his way to interact with others. This is a key theme because the cast are overwhelmingly young and the youthful audience the game was targeted at often feel misunderstood or that the world chooses not to understand them. This theme also highlights the nobility of the cast as despite their disappointment in being misunderstood or profiled wrong they choose to do what’s right even when it is the more difficult option. This makes them so compelling that it’s hard to not to be inspired by their crafting, and has helped me massively in my journey to being a director and writer by really making me thinking about how my characters can and would react to others in realistic ways.
Matt sHERIDAN'S rESEARCH AND eNQUIRY 