The True Antagonist of Final Fantasy VII

by Tom Bennett

Who is the real villain in Final Fantasy VII? Most people think it’s Sephiroth, since he’s the person who you see and fight throughout the game. On the surface, without analyzing the plot too much, this would appear to be correct. However, after looking into the events of the story more closely, many people have come to believe that JENOVA is the true antagonist. They argue that this creature is using Sephiroth’s image to carry out her goal of harming the planet and feeding from its energy, while Sephiroth himself has been dead for years. Since this theory is much more intelligent and well supported than the assumption that Sephiroth is the baddy “‘cause it looks like ‘im,” it has become more widely accepted that JENOVA is the real enemy. Yet, despite the strong support for the JENOVA theory, it is still in error. Sephiroth is Final Fantasy VII’s true antagonist, and using information that comes right out of the game, I’m going to prove it, once and for all.

To understand why Sephiroth is the real enemy, we must begin with the story of JENOVA. JENOVA is an ancient creature that injured the planet centuries ago in order to feed from its life energy. She was somehow defeated (most likely by the ancients) and ended up buried beneath the planet’s surface. She was discovered by Professor Gast who took her to be an ancient, but later discovered that she wasn’t. He was killed and Hojo took over supervision of the JENOVA project, splitting JENOVA’s body into pieces and using its cells in his experiments. Hojo’s greatest accomplishment was to create the offspring of JENOVA, Sephiroth.

Sephiroth grew up to become the number one SOLDIER in Shinra's forces and a war hero. On his fateful mission to Nibelhiem he uncovered the truth about his past, that he was the son of JENOVA. After days of secluded research below the Shinra Mansion, his outlook on life was irrevocably altered. He now felt it was his right and destiny to rule over the planet, to become one with everything and elevate himself to the status of a god. He sought to reunite with his mother, and so traveled to the Mako reactor to free her. Here he was confronted by Cloud who, after a dramatic confrontation, ended up hurling him into the reactor. At this point, the JENOVA theorists say that Sephiroth was killed, and that his direct influence on the game's plot ended. I disagree. Sephiroth did not die in the reactor. His body was rendered useless, but his mind and soul lived on. He became, as he puts it when you meet him in the Temple of the Ancients, "A traveler of the Lifestream."

Now, the basis of the JENOVA theory comes from the fact that the Sephiroth you meet throughout the game (the one who kills Aeris) reveals himself to be a piece of JENOVA. The assumption was made that it was JENOVA all along and that Sephiroth had nothing to do with it. However, there are many occurrences in the game that suggest there is much more to it than that. First of all, let's look at JENOVA's motivation. JENOVA is a parasite. It is a creature that travels the galaxy sucking the life out of the planets it comes across. It lives to feed on the lives of others. Sephiroth is a man with maniacal ambitions of world domination. When you encounter Sephiroth (or JENOVA as Sephiroth if you believe the JENOVA theory) in the Temple of the Ancients, he reveals much about his intentions. He tells Cloud and the others how he plans not only to injure the planet, but to destroy it and absorb its life energy entirely. In so doing he can create a new world in which he is god. If the JENOVA theorists are correct, then this is really JENOVA's plan, but that just doesn't fit. Both JENOVA and Sephiroth were striving for something before they were defeated; JENOVA to injure the planet and feed from it, Sephiroth to rule it and be its sole inhabitant. Based on these ambitions, it certainly makes more sense to believe that this plan comes from the mind of Sephiroth and not from JENOVA at all.

This is certainly not to say that JENOVA is infallible or unimportant in the whole affair, quite the contrary in fact. Sephiroth needs JENOVA to complete his plans. First of all, she allowed him to create a puppet body for himself from a piece of hers (the piece that was being held captive in Midgar), which Sephiroth used to slay the last surviving ancient, Aeris. Then, Sephiroth called all the scattered pieces of JENOVA to his body (the JENOVA reunion at North Crater) in order to reform his mother so he might join with her. As a single entity, they would have the power to absorb the planet’s energy when Meteor hits, thus allowing Sephiroth to ascend as a supreme being. How do I know this? Well, they do it at the end of the game. After you defeat JENOVA she combines with Sephiroth, forming Bizzaro Sephiroth. Once Bizzaro Sephiroth is slain, Sephiroth is reborn as the One-Winged Angel (as a side note, a scaled down version of the same transformation happens to Hojo when he ODs on JENOVA cells). Finally, after his supreme form has been defeated, Sephiroth’s soul reaches out and challenges Cloud’s. Cloud’s will is stronger, so he prevails and is returned to his body just in time to escape the crater. Was Sephiroth destroyed? Who knows? I’d like to think not, since a sequel to FF7 would rock, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, the point is that the true evil in FF7 is Sephiroth. He and JENOVA work together extremely closely, even joining together physically by the end, so it’s easy to see how JENOVA could be mistaken for the real enemy. However, the fact that Sephiroth’s essence, his mind and soul, the ever present adversary and driving force behind all that transpired in the summoning of Meteor, reaches out for one last battle against Cloud just serves to reaffirm and prove, beyond doubt, that Sephiroth is the true antagonist in every sense of the word. To say that the antagonist is JENOVA doesn’t even begin to do justice to one of the most complex and finely crafted villains in the history of Final Fantasy, the elusive yet undeniably powerful presence of Sephiroth.