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The Iterations of Cid: Part 2
*contains spoilers*
Welcome back fellow forum goers! Are you ready for some more Cid in your life? Today we are going to explore further into the world of Cid, learning about the characters from Final Fantasy V through VIII. So join me as we continue to take a look at the series staple, Cid! It'll be almost as fun as a ride on an airship.
Final Fantasy V
Playable: No
Airship related: Yes
Facial hair: Yes
Cid from Final Fantasy V is named Cid Previa. He is an elderly man living in the Kingdom of Karnak. But he is no ordinary senior citizen, and is actually an inventor and scholar who researches the Crystals.
Cid invented a machine that produces more energy for the Crystals. Because of this, Karnak becomes one of the most prosperous Kingdoms in all the land. But because things can never just be that simple, it turns out that his machines are damaging the Crystals, and would Ultimately shatter them. Cid, being a stand up citizen, tries to shut down his machinery. The Kingdom, reacting in a perfectly reasonable manner, decides this deserves jail time.
Quote:
No, it's alright. All of this is my fault. According to a book I found at the Ancient Library, long ago the Crystals had power much greater than they do now. I studied the Crystals in Tycoon, Worus, and Karnak and built machines to amplify their power. But this was a terrible mistake. When a Crystal's power is amplified, the Crystal will shatter, it's all my fault.
-Cid
As we can see from Cid's quote, reading only leads to trouble. He is released after the minister of Karak realizes that, hey, he was right after all. Cid, being the great guy he is, agrees to help and try to save the Crystal.
After failing at doing so, Cid does what any of us in his position would do. Go to a bar, get drunk, and sulk.
The party leaves him there, because you can't help people who aren't willing to help themselves, and travels to the Library of the Ancients, where they meet Cid's grandson, Mid. After finding out that the party is acquainted with his grandfather, and finding out about his grandfather's sad state, Mid heads over to smack some sense into his grandpa.
Quote:
Mid:
What am I doing? What are YOU doing, you silly old fool!? You never give up! Never!
Cid:
Mid...
Mid:
You always told me not to be afraid of failing... That if you messed up you just had to start over and try again... What happened to that!?
Cid:
Mid...
*Cid bows his head. He raises it again*
Cid:
Mid... ... Just try again... ... Mid! You're absolutely right!
What an excellent lesson in family bonding and elderly abuse. Because Cid is, in fact, Cid, he and Mid then make a ship that can sail without the wind so that the party can try to save the last remaining Crystal. Conveniently, Mid has just the book for doing so. They then return to the Library of the Ancients, presumably to do some more reading and learn how to make bicycles with no wheels.
Well the ship sinks. The party uses a Black Chocobo to return to the Library of the Ancients to let Cid know. When they arrive, Cid and Mid inform the party of seeing the King of Tycoon heading for the Shifting Sands. The party heads over to investigate, and Cid and Mid take off on the Black Chocobo. Well a series of coincidences happen and they all end up at the same place together! More conveniently, they find their ship, pretty much undamaged, and an ancient airship. Cid, being the genius he is, knows just how to get it running, too! What would they do without you, Cid? He instructs the party on how to get to the Earth Crystal and most of his appearances afterwards are making modifications to the airship.
Cid Previa is mentioned in Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals, although he has already passed on, and he also has a card in the Final Fantasy Trading Card Game.
I actually don't remember much from Cid in Final Fantasy V, but he seems to me to fit the mold of a Cid pretty well. He fixes up airships for your party, as well as other methods of transportation. He isn't heard from much, and is probably one of the less popular and less well known Cid's of the series.
Final Fantasy VI
Playable: No
Airship related: Slightly
Facial hair: Yes
The star Cid for Final Fantasy VI is Cid Del Norte Marquez. He works for the Ghestal Empire (the bad guys) and is the inventor of the Magitek process, which is the process of draining Espers of their Magic and transferring it to humans.
Cid's first attempt at this was with Kefka, and the experiment caused Kefka to become twisted and unpopular. By twisted, I assume the game means he started dressing like a crazy clown. After his failure, Cid wasn't going to call it quits, and decided the experiment should be done on a two year old girl (what?). The girl was Celes and the experiment was a success. Afterwards, Cid raised her like his own daughter. I would hope so; he just did a previously failed experiment on a two year old child. Because Cid raised her on his own, that stands to reason that she was an orphan. This makes sense because no parent in their right mind would agree to allow some strangely dressed man to perform these kinds of experiments on a child.
But it's all good, because somehow the player is meant to ignore this fact and carry on as if Cid is a good guy, because he realizes the error of his ways. See, what he didn't realize is that the Esper magic extraction was actually killing the subjects. Once the Returners (the heroes) show him his errors, he joins them and tries to get Emperor Ghestal to stop the madness that he previously condoned and was in fact a large part of. He also represents the Returners in a banquet at the palace, and tries to convince Ghestal to change his evil plans of evil.
Quote:
Kefka has used me... Used the Empire. What have I done...? The life-life energy of those Espers... You've helped me come to a decision. I'm going to talk to the Emperor and have this stupid war stopped!
-Cid
Later in the game, during the World of Ruin, Cid has spent a year taking care of Celes, and he begins to get ill. Celes feeds him fish to make him well -- I assume she is suffering from Stockholm syndrome -- and if done right with the proper fish, Cid lives. If he is fed rotten fish, he dies. If he lives, Cid shows Celes to a raft, which she can use to go find her friends. If he dies, she attempts suicide by jumping off a cliff. She survives, however, and when Locke's bandana comes floating by, she has hope that her friends are still alive, and goes searching for them. We then learn a valuable lesson from our friend Cid here that bad fish will be the death of you. Also, he looks as if he's dressed up as a giant banana.
Quote:
No matter what happens to me... you musn't lose hope! *cough*...
-The dying Cid
Cid from Final Fantasy VI is certainly memorable. As I stated, he comes across as a kind and caring man. He realizes what he was doing was wrong, and so he stops. But we only briefly get told about the experiments he did to Celes, and because of his kind nature, you have to think twice about what he did to a two year old child that is actually really creepy and wrong. I find it interesting that he drew the line where he did and not at the potential harm of such a young girl.
But he does obviously have some good in him and is quite helpful to the party, and he does do the right thing in raising Celes as his own daughter. He has a strong personality, as is shown when he finally takes a stand to fight for what he believes is right and to stop what he believes is wrong.
Final Fantasy VII
Playable: Yes
Airship related: Yes
Facial hair: Mildly
Final Fantasy VII's Cid. Cid Highwind. Perhaps the most famous and well known of all the Cids. Known for his verbal abuse, chain smoking, airship and spaceship building, and foul mouth.
Cid Highwind is the designer of the Tiny Bronco plane and the Highwind airship. His dream was to be the first man in space. He almost achieves this goal, but because life never works out the way we want it to, his first launch was a failure. His assistant, Shera, was overly cautious about the launch, and wouldn't evacuate. If Cid had continued his launch, Shera would have died. Instead Cid abandoned his dream to save her life. Pretty lame that he would risk his dream to save a woman's life, right? After that, Shinra, the company that was in charge of the space program, decided space wasn't important enough, and they cut the funding for the space project, killing Cid's dream.
Quote:
And so, Shinra nixed their outer space exploration plans. After they told me how the future was Space Exploration and got my damn hopes up... DAMN THEM!
-Cid
The party first meets Cid around the same time that Shinra makes a visit. Cid, feeling like a child expecting a trip to Disneyland, hopes that Shinra is there to start the space program up again. Instead he receives the equivalent of a kick in the teeth when he finds out that they just want to take his plane, the Tiny Bronco, instead. Cid and the party fly off to prevent Shinra from taking it, first getting shot down by the Shinra, and then crashing somewhere in the ocean. Luckily video game shooters have terrible accuracy when not in a fight, and no one is injured. Cid's dreams once again destroyed and probably feeling like his heart was stomped on, he joins Cloud and co., and they use the flightless Tiny Bronco as a boat.
When the party is separated at the Northern Crater, and Tifa and Barret are up for execution in Junon, Cid commandeers the Highwind from Shinra, a ship he made that was taken and used by Shinra, and goes to rescue them. Once they find Cloud, Tifa stays back to help him and Cid becomes the party leader for a short amount of time. During this time, we learn that he runs like he has a stick up his butt.
Later in the game, Shinra attempts to use Cid's spaceship to send the Huge Materia crashing into Meteor to try and destroy it. Cloud and co. decide to stop them because... uhh.. apparently just because it's Shinra and/or they would rather use the Materia instead. I get that the plan didn't work, but they didn't know that and it could have helped. So they stopped Shinra from doing something that had the potential to save the world. Yep, that happened. On a positive note, Cid finally achieves his dream of going into Space when they attempt to take the Huge Materia from the spaceship, and finds out that Shera, his assistant who ruined his first space mission, was actually correct, and that the spaceship was not safe to launch. The party returns safely to the Planet and Cid realizes that the verbal abuse of poor Shera was uncalled for.
Quote:
I don't give a rat's ass whether it's science or magical power. No. I guess if I had to choose, I'd rather put my money on the power of science. Humans who used to only roam around on the planet are able to fly now! And finally, we're about to go into outer space. Science is a "Power" created and developed by humans. And science just might be what saves this planet.
-Cid
Cid's Theme, composed by Nobuo Uematu, is an excellent representation of his personality. Slightly melancholy to represent his lost hopes and dreams, but headstrong and motivated.
In battle, Cid uses spears to fight, and his final limit break is the Highwind, an attack that uses his airship to attack the enemies.
He also makes appearances in Before Crisis -Final Fantasy VII- as a boss fight, in the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Final Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, and a few games in the Kingdom Hearts Series, and he also has a card for the Final Fantasy Trading Card Game.
Cid is one of the most popular characters in the series, and is probably the most well known Cid. I find this quite interesting. I personally am not a fan of Cid Highwind. He is verbally abusive, he cusses a lot, anyone traveling with him for long periods of time is probably going to end up with some sort of long cancer caused by second hand smoke, and his goggles look stupid. That's right, I said it. The goggles are dumb.
Despite all of this, it certainly shows his strength of character that despite being abusive to the woman who risked her life to probably save his, he still has such a large fan base. Sure, he did cancel the launch to save her, but that doesn't excuse his treatment of the poor woman who already feels guilty enough. He does show some strength when Cloud is busy being a vegetable in a wheelchair and Cid takes charge of the party in a quest to prevent the evil Shinra from hogging all of the huge materia.
Cid Highwind: teaching women everywhere that it's okay to try and risk your life for a verbally abuse chain smoker so long as he means well.
Final Fantasy VIII
Playable: No
Airship related: Not really
Facial hair: No
Cid in Final Fantasy VIII is named Cid Kramer, often referred to as Headmaster Cid. He also bears a striking resemblance to Robin Williams. He is the founder of SeeD, a group of mercenaries that seems to be mostly composed of children and adolescents. He is also the headmaster of Balamb Garden. So basically he rents teenagers out for paid mercenary work that involves assassinations and getting involved in international conflicts. He is clearly a stand up guy and a good citizen.
Before the game begins, Cid married the Sorceress Edea, who ran an orphanage that happened to house all of the game's main characters. What a coincidence! Due to some nifty time magics by the Sorceress Ultimecia, Squall went back in time to the orphanage when he was a little boy and told Edea about SeeD. Edea then decided that Squall would defeat the powerful sorceress Ultimecia, and so she had Cid found SeeD. ...I swear it makes more sense when you play the game and don't have it all compressed into one paragraph. (SPOILER) No, it doesn't.
SeeD was originally intended as a training school for Squall to defeat Ultimecia. But because of funding, Cid teamed up with a rude, ugly shumi named NORG, who decided to turn the children into mercenaries in order to help fund everything and make a profit. Due to some disagreement during the game, there is a point when NORG tries and fails to take control of Balamb Garden, and then is never heard from again.
Further in the game, because it isn't bad enough that these children are being used as tools of war, missiles get launched at Balamb Garden. Luckily the attack misses, and Cid, having nothing to do with airships this time, still can't resist being mobile in some way. The Garden, much to people's surprise, takes off and ends up at Fisherman's Horizon. After that, Cid hands the leadership of SeeD to Squall and heads back to the orphanage.
Quote:
This journey will involve many battles. A well-qualified leader is needed for this. Therefore, I am now appointing Squall as your new leader. From now on, Squall will be the leader. He will decide our destination and battle plan.
-Cid, to his students
I would hate to be the student who missed the announcement that a 17-year-old was now in charge of everything.
Cid appears at the end of the game with Edea, taking part in the celebrations.
In the game, he holds the Seifer Almasy Triple Traid Card. He also has his own card in The Final Fantasy Trading Card Game.
Cid is the type of guy I want to like. He runs a "school" of sorts, wears a sweater vest, and looks like Robin Williams. Instead, he comes across as cowardly, not very intelligent, and kind of annoying.
But you an argue that without his efforts, Squall never would have become the person he is and Ultimecia would have succeeded in her crazy time compression plan.
And that concludes the second edition of The Iterations of Cid. What do you think of the Cids listed? Who was your favorite Cid mentioned yet?
