Final Fantasy VII: A Socialist Primer
“No one lives in the slums because they want to. It’s like this train. It can only go where its rails take it.”
— Cloud Strife
At first glance, Final Fantasy VII which was originally released in 1997 appears like an exploration into a filth-ridden retro-future rife with magic married to tech. The characters combat with weapons medieval and cyberpunk, anything from broadswords and pikes to hand-mounted gatling guns and animatronic kittens. In spite of that, everything is stylized like the 1940s, with cars that have bulky, rounded frames and traditional diners (serving, primarily, the “special of the day”) embedded in both rural and urban landscapes. It is, in almost every facet, a fantasy.
But is it?
The narrative focuses on one man — Cloud Strife. He’s a former corporate soldier gone mercenary who’s hired into an environmental terrorist group. Though his past is murky, he lives by one simple code: how much does it pay? In the city of Midgar, where our story begins, everyone lives to make the game’s currency: gil. Make enough gil and you can even buy an oceanside property to, theoretically, retire in. But when Cloud’s terrorist company, Avalanche, comes into contact with Aerith, the last of an indigenous people, Cloud comes to realize money isn’t everything — and that maybe the system that emphasizes the Midgar dollar can no longer be redeemed.
Final Fantasy VII’s emphasis on environmental destruction feels like just a small part of our heroes’ stories. Much of their quest is couched in revenge against the corporation that had destroyed the environment, after it also ruined their lives and cast them out. But, the landscape surrounding the mega-metropolis of Midgar is devoid of flora. The only fauna you encounter is violent and warped by the deadened environment. And though sequels would suggest that the adoption of oil could solve the havoc reeked upon the world’s most populated region, the corporate overlord’s harvesting and consumption of mako, the world’s naturally occurring life blood, is analogous to climate change driven by carbon pollution from industrialization and the fossil fuel industry. Midgar isn’t just a dry, drought-ridden husk of an industrial city though — its people live primarily in slums, many of which are killed at random by their corporatized government to stomp out potential dissidents.
Shinra is the name of their monopolistic corporate overlord, commanded by a dictator known only as President Shinra and his son, Rufus. Not only does Shinra manufacture all the vehicles and the rigs for draining the planet of mako, but they command a private army that enforces their policies. At one point, an abandoned rig has been taken by an organization working to prevent the extinction of condors, but they’re violently pushed out by Shinra, manifested as foot soldiers and tanks to steal whatever remnant of resources the abandoned reactor could provide. In other episodes of the game, these rigs have been used to displace people, have exploded and destroyed nearby populations, and have irreparably contaminated the environment. Cloud at one point returns to his hometown, because the mako reactor is creating horrifying, mutated monsters.
Shinra also acts as a force of colonization. Cloud’s service in Shinra’s military were at the tail-end of a war Shinra started with a small, remote continent called Wutai, which resulted in the people of Wutai being neutered of defenses and resources, their culture left bastardized to the point of being a gimmick. Meanwhile, heroes from the war were praised — but these heroes, genetically-engineered super soldiers, suffer from PTSD, combat-related physical illness and injuries, and no financial security to speak of despite their service. Later spinoffs, like Dirge of Cerberus, would go so far as to say that many of these genetic experiments and abandoned soldiers would create a culture of their own, building a militia called Deepground to take their own revenge on the people that forgot them.
Shinra isn’t just demented for its neglect to its soldiers and citizens, its environmental abuse, or their colonial tactics. The heads of the organization, its board of trustees, collectively worship a deity called Jenova, under the impression that she would lead them to the blatantly titled Promised Land, a parallel to modern day Zionism. After finding what they believe to be Jenova’s tomb, they use her DNA in their genetic experiments, hoping that their latest slate of super soldiers would lead them, with their god in tow, to a land ripe for plundering — the very source of the planet’s blood. If successful, they intend to reduce the world to ashes in order to fill their pockets.
Final Fantasy VII does not cringe away from its criticism on capitalist culture. Instead, it leans into its characters. Cloud may be a cheapskate at first, but he flirts with egalitarianism when his role in saving the world becomes clearer, taking on a leadership role among the motley crew. He’s accompanied by Tifa and Barrett, two Avalanche operatives who devote their lives to the adoption of orphans and environmental justice. Aerith and Red XIII, his indigenous friends, sacrifice life and limb to protect their dwindling cultural heritages. Yuffie, a product of Wutai’s war, has set out to take from Shinra and redistribute the wealth. Vincent, a former Shinra operative, was also experimented on, and seeks only to end their experiments for good, while Cid, one of their engineers, seeks retribution for his scientific ambitions being squashed when Shinra could no longer profit from him. Finally, there’s Cait Sith, a corporate whistleblower who knows all too well what harms Shinra has caused.
However, a group of terrorists toppling a corporatocracy implies a demand to return to an anarchic state. That’s not the case here. In the aftermath of the game, featured in the film Advent Children and the game Dirge of Cerberus, the surviving heroes combine their efforts to start the World Regenesis Organization, built on curing illness, terraforming destroyed environments, and redistributing power into the hands of workers. Though not specifically using the words democratic or socialistic, there are no presidents or corporate overlords but policies collectively adopted to restore the society to a time that precedes the game’s modern history. They act as a governmental force without really being a government at all, but a state composed of those that volunteer to rebuild in very much a “Not Me. Us” fashion.
In case it wasn’t clear, American society isn’t all that different. We, too, find our leaders embedded in corporate structures — ones who consciously deny environmental destruction and live at the mercy of theocrats in search of a promised land. Colonization from Europe and the Americas has neutered numerous cultures, leaving many like Iran and North Korea to adopt hostile natures due to Euro-centric manipulation driven by corporate interests in natural resources and the whitewashing of other peoples. Our leaders have stomped out indigenous peoples, going so far as to be willful participants of genocide — not just in the past, but in the modern age too, with our efforts against peoples within our state and external of it. Most of all, more and more people every day are living in poverty. It isn’t quite like Midgar, where the slums are literally beneath the upperclass dwellings, but the analogy of a disappearing middle class is not without warrant. It’s hard not to walk beneath an overpass and not compare the tent cities there to the ones illustrated in the game.
I cannot speak to the intentions of Final Fantasy VII’s writing staff. Its head writer, Kazushige Nojima, isn’t known for writing much outside of the Final Fantasy series, though most of those games are intentional analogs to our own culture. But I believe that it’s not unlike many post-WWII Japanese stories which emphasize the destruction of culture, of individuality, at the hands of western powers bleeding their nation, their very identity, of resources. The cultural landscape of Final Fantasy VII in its retro-future stylization feels like a direct commentary on eras of industrialization that followed the western expansion into Asia and the Middle East for capital monetization. And though climate change wasn’t the same issue up for debate in the mid-90s as it is today, I can’t help but wonder if the writers merely guessed at our future or if we grew into their dystopia. It’s not hard to look at capitalism, and the west its as progenitor, as an undermining of ethics and tradition to enrich the few.
With its remake slated for release next year, I think for any gamer who once enjoyed Final Fantasy VII and for the millions who have demanded an opportunity to play it but have yet to seize it should really examine the deeper themes in the game beyond the engrossing narrative of good and evil, one which gets grayer as the game carries on. I encourage everyone to look past the beautiful graphics and engaging gameplay to truly see how the world of Final Fantasy VII isn’t all that remarkable within the context of our own future intentions. I hope that its heroes stop appearing like over-stylized, over-powered anime characters miming cliches, and instead become a resistance against capitalism, or even extensions of marxism and egalitarianism to do what’s best for all people, not just the select few.
Somewhere in the heart of Midgar, there’s an abandoned church to some forgotten god where flowers continue to bloom. Sometime in Midgar’s future, the city is lush with flora again in the absence of humanity. But we don’t have to pick from the few rare flowers that survived corporate abuse against the environment, or wait for humans to destroy themselves before that world can flourish once more. We just have to stand in solidarity now.
[Insert victory fanfare].
“After a long sleep, time has come.”
— Sephiroth
Update:
The Final Fantasy VII remake demo showed us some new content that didn’t appear in the original game too, including Shinra’s efforts to create a conspiracy theory as a means of both painting the terrorists worse than they were and taking a greater stranglehold on the people. Sounds a lot like the Iraq War to me, but that might be too close to home. This, after all, is just a fantasy.
