Final Fantasy VII and Celebrating the Incomplete
“Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess. We seek it thus, and take to the sky."
So go the words of LOVELESS, a fictional epic poem from the world of Final Fantasy VII. It tells the story of three friends who search for the fabled Gift of the Goddess. The final act, however, is missing, and only a single line remains of it.
LOVELESS appears throughout the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, both as a plot point and as a simple reference, but it also serves as a crystallization of a recurring theme throughout Final Fantasy VII saga: incompleteness.
Genesis is an imperfect product of a flawed experiment. Throughout most of Crisis Core he suffers from a degradation that is slowly killing him. He seeks many treatments to quell his ailment, but in the end even his closest friend condemns him to rot, unwilling to donate even the smallest sample of the DNA which contains the Jenova cells that Genesis believes can save him.
Wounded and weak from his traumatic confrontation with Sephiroth in the Nibelheim Mako Reactor and a subsequent 4 years of experimentation and mako infusion, Cloud and Zack flee across the country pursued by the full strength of the Shinra Corporation Army. After Zack is killed, Cloud takes up his sword and continues alone, his warped mind combining his own aspirations and Zack’s old war stories into an amalgam identity for himself that is an echo of Zack’s truth.
When Kadaj from Advent Children finally recovers Jenova’s remains, he sees that the case containing her genetic material has been damaged by gunfire. He sobs at the sight, clutching the box to his chest. All he has left is his anger, his rage. In desperation, he combines the Jenova cells with his own body, becoming a true vessel of Sephiroth.
This expression of incompleteness and the ways we approach it color the entirety of the Compilation, and it has taken me a long time to come to a point where I can fully unpack it. When I first engaged with the Compilation, I was a teenager. I knew something was missing. I knew I was incomplete, but I couldn’t understand how or why. Rather than examine my feelings, I dove into stories like these. Stories about identity and existence, about transformation and apotheosis. I took refuge in the complexity of media when the complexity of my self was too much to consider.
I’ve changed a lot in the decade since the final release under the Compilation branding. I came to terms with my sexuality and confronted my gender. I embraced transformative works like fan fiction and rejected the sanctity of canon. I’ve become much more concerned with what a work does than what a work is. What I value now is less the intricacies of a work’s construction and more the emotions it leaves me with when I’m done with it.
It was because of this change in my values that I chose to revisit this franchise in the first place. Crisis Core in particular meant a lot to me at that time of incompleteness, and reexamining that story has been really eye-opening for me. Now that I feel more complete, more whole, I can recognize and appreciate how the Compilation’s incompleteness helped me survive my own. It also led me to consider this theme in a new context entirely.
Even outside of the text of the games, the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII revels in its incompleteness. In a secret ending to Dirge of Cerberus, the final game in the Compilation timeline, Genesis returns. He approaches Weiss, the primary antagonist from that game, saying there is "more work to do". Then he departs, flying off into the moonlight. There has never been a follow up to that game. That thread is left dangling for us to interpret, just like the missing fifth act of the LOVELESS epic.
In his final confrontation with Genesis, Zack expresses frustration with the cryptic LOVELESS text. Genesis has the perfect answer:
"To ponder the mystery is in itself a gift."
