Emo Re-invention

[VeloZer0]

I've just started playing the FFVII port on my PS3, and I can't help but notice how un-emo Cloud really is. For must of the game he just comes off as a huge jerk, may not be your cup of tea as a character, but certainly not emo.

Then look to the most recent iterations of Cloud in AC and KH. He is a little emo b****. It almost seems like he has been completely re-invented. I can't help but think his characterization as emo is something invented completely after the fact, imo making him a far less appealing character,

[Crimson]

Two words.


Tetsuya Nomura.

[Elly]

Cloud in AC is actualy dying so he has every right to feel like crap, as for his actions in the original game he's just partialy emulating Zack... so Cloud is being a little emotional, who wouldn't be if they were dying and felt too helpless to save a child they've come to care about...

on a side note i find it insulting that people use emo as an insult when it's just a sub-genre of punk music...
if it's used to mean emotional then, honestly if you dissassociate oneself from all emotion then you're just a hollow robot with no reason to even exist, so emo is a good thing, no reason to use it as an insult... call me emo and i'll be happy that you acknowledge my humanity...

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Cloud does get pretty down about himself in the middle of the game, where Sephiroth and Hojo have him questioning the nature of his own existence, and he has to face the lies he's been telling himself about what happened in Nibelheim five years ago. But yes—before that, he's just surly, and after that, he's perfectly chill.

on a side note i find it insulting that people use emo as an insult when it's just a sub-genre of punk music...
if it's used to mean emotional then, honestly if you dissassociate oneself from all emotion then you're just a hollow robot with no reason to even exist, so emo is a good thing, no reason to use it as an insult... call me emo and i'll be happy that you acknowledge my humanity...

"Emo" in this context just refers to the maudlin excess of personal melodrama commonly associated with the music and the people who make and listen to it.

[Wolf Kanno]

For me, I felt Cloud goes through several different personalities as the whole of the VII universe unfolds. In the original game, he a surly jerk (which is my favorite version of him) in the beginning of Midgard, but once Aerith and Sephiroth enter the scene he starts to act more like Cecil from IV with his "I must atone and get revenge" kinda attitude but he's still kicking ass and taking names. At the end of Disc 1 and the beginning of Disc 2, Cloud is confused but still determined despite even him becoming aware of his own mental instability.

After the Lifestream incident in Mideel, I feel Cloud kinda falls into a persona that lacks real confidence that is more spurred on by guilt and anger than what he really wanted to do. He really falls apart as a character for me by this point but its interesting to watch. Though I do wonder if I interpret it this way cause the dialogue feels that way or if I'm being influenced by his more emotionally extreme self in the Compilation. Cause he's technically not as annoying as his Compilation/KH counterpart. This was something I wondered recently when I played the game cause he seemed more emo to me than I remember.

In the Compilation, he comes across, very self-defeating, suffers from "survivor syndrome" that really needs a quick boot to the head rather than some drawn out inner search for redemption. In AC, I understand he's dying and he cares for Denzel but I never felt he really seemed to be torn up about it. He's still hung up on Zack and Aerith and I get really annoyed cause I felt we sorta resolved all this in the game. Maybe AC Complete fixes this but it still doesn't change that Cloud spends most of AC emotionally beating himself up for crap that isn't his fault and rather than try to reason his way into a better emotional state he whines about how useless he is, cuts himself off from everyone, and half ass accepts his death as his final atonement.

He's like an overly melodramatic high school kid and its painful to watch. His uncertainty just drives me crazy, his story in Dissidia is just painful to listen to and I really had to force myself not to skip the dialogue cause he was so irritating and its obnoxious that he carries this persona in every title he appears in now. The sad thing is, he's not this bad in the original game and even when he did start to flirt with this type of territory it always felt reasonable and justified whereas now, I have to strive for excuses to his attitude.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

After the Lifestream incident in Mideel, I feel Cloud kinda falls into a persona that lacks real confidence that is more spurred on by guilt and anger than what he really wanted to do. He really falls apart as a character for me by this point but its interesting to watch. Though I do wonder if I interpret it this way cause the dialogue feels that way or if I'm being influenced by his more emotionally extreme self in the Compilation. Cause he's technically not as annoying as his Compilation/KH counterpart. This was something I wondered recently when I played the game cause he seemed more emo to me than I remember.

I'd have to say your perception is indeed skewed by later renditions of the character, because Cloud gains confidence and peace of mind after he sorts out his head in the Lifestream.

[Wolf Kanno]

But he has a few dialogue pieces on the Highwind where he begins to doubt himself and he needs "pep talks" from some of the cast as well. He has moments of uncertainty but I feel its more about him trying to figure out how he should act since he's been emulating Zack up until that point. Its not so much he is whiny but rather he comes across unsure of himself and he tends to be the first to suggest that the worse case scenario will happen. He just seems to have lost the confidence he had before. Its nowhere near as bad and I'm pretty sure you are right in that my last playthrough may have warped it a bit more than usual.

[Jiro]

A lot of Cloud's lines in AC are defeatist to the point of being ridiculous. One would assume they were trying to carry on that uncertainty he had during the game, but they haven't quite got it right.

While he does have moments of decent characterisation, I feel that AC did him no justice. Better luck next time?

[Elly]

i got the impression from the lifestream flashbacks that Cloud was always unsure of himself... it's in that incident that he shakes off the Zack persona and takes on his real personality which was always a bit negative in some way, of course the poor translation of the original game may have something to do with the english speaking worlds misunderstanding of Clouds personality... i believe the AC persona may be more like what it was originaly intended to be, but of course the U.S. entertainment industry was afraid of anything negative, like sad endings and the lead character being less than heroic untill more recently...

[Jaffer]

I doubt that, the scene with Tifa under the airship, pepping up Yuffie about her motion sickness, Sending everyoe home to be with their families fully expecting them to come back, I have hard time believing that's all a mistranslation. Anyway it's all relative: Cloud deals with his problem by distancing himself, Cid goes to life with the woman he feels is responsible for his situation and makes her life living hell never taking 15 minutes out of his life to see if his blame isn't misplaced, Barret and Tifa blow up reactors and kill innocent people under the pretence of justice, Vincent crawls into a coffin and doesn't come out for 30 years.

Is Cloud really that bad by comparison?

EDIT: Is he that bad in Dissidia, Turk? Man, i was looking forward to that game...

[Raistlin]

I'd have to say your perception is indeed skewed by later renditions of the character, because Cloud gains confidence and peace of mind after he sorts out his head in the Lifestream.

I agree. He still had some later development to go, but that was definitely the incident that allowed him to start regaining his confidence to keep going forward.

EDIT: Regarding the OP, I'm no huge fan of Cloud, but he was not emo. He was a bit of a whiny jerk to start the game off, though.

[Wolf Kanno]

i got the impression from the lifestream flashbacks that Cloud was always unsure of himself... it's in that incident that he shakes off the Zack persona and takes on his real personality which was always a bit negative in some way, of course the poor translation of the original game may have something to do with the english speaking worlds misunderstanding of Clouds personality... i believe the AC persona may be more like what it was originaly intended to be, but of course the U.S. entertainment industry was afraid of anything negative, like sad endings and the lead character being less than heroic until more recently...

See, I got the impression Cloud was like any other boy when they first discover women and just nervous. I don't think he was like that all the time otherwise he probably wouldn't have taken the emotional abuse of being with Tifa's obnoxious friends, sticking with Tifa as she climbed Mt. Nibel, or even think about leaving his home and joining SOLDIER. I don't see how a cynical and insecure individual could do all that.

I always felt Cloud's bit of insecurity at the end was a combination of him readjusting himself to his new identity and possible second guessing his actions. Sometimes he probably wonders if his choices are really his decisions or if he might still be thinking like Zack or being manipulated by Jenova/Sephiroth.

I feel the problem some have with Cloud is that he's the reversed version of the Angsty teen hero popular in anime. His counterparts are Amuro and Shinji except, instead of starting off whiny and growing into a an individual you can be proud of; Cloud starts as this amazing person and then learns he's actually very ordinary and then decides every accomplishment he's done up to that point "doesn't count" except for when he failed "which was all his fault".

If I was Cloud's teammates, we would need an intervention and it would mostly involve beating the crap out of Cloud and making him stop thinking like a retard. We'd do Vincent next and finish with Yuffie and Tifa for the hell of it.

To be fair, I feel Sephiroth has also gone over a big transformation from the original and unlike Cloud, I feel SE has been tweaking him specifically to fit into the view the fans have of him.

I doubt that, the scene with Tifa under the airship, pepping up Yuffie about her motion sickness, Sending everyone home to be with their families fully expecting them to come back, I have hard time believing that's all a mistranslation. Anyway it's all relative: Cloud deals with his problem by distancing himself, Cid goes to life with the woman he feels is responsible for his situation and makes her life living hell never taking 15 minutes out of his life to see if his blame isn't misplaced, Barret and Tifa blow up reactors and kill innocent people under the pretense of justice, Vincent crawls into a coffin and doesn't come out for 30 years.

Is Cloud really that bad by comparison?

Well to be honest, VII has my least favorite class for several of the reasons stated but regardless, I think Cloud gets picked on more cause he's way more exposed than the rest of the class. Each time he basically appears more melodramatic and more angsty before and deals with the same issues except twisted and made more ridiculous depending on the title. Cloud has not grown as a character since 1997.

EDIT: Is he that bad in Dissidia, Turk? Man, i was looking forward to that game...

He sounds bored most of the time which is more of the VA's fault but most of his dialogue is him complaining about wanting a reason to fight and how he's not the way people think he is. Finally Sephiroth shows up and and basically say "What the smurf? Do I always need to give you a reason to get off your ass and finally do something?". That's the Reader's Digest version. Even his victory dialogue is more depressing than awesome.

[Jaffer]

I think you need to pay a little less attention to how he acts, and focus on what they all do. It really annoys the heck out of me. Cloud is going to be black gue in one month and distances himself from the twelve year old girl so she doesn't have to see that. Cid gets his dreams crushed by Shera and for the following three years or so allows her to life in his house as long as he can verbally abuse her to his hearts content. it would really take him only a few minutes to find out that it wasn't her fault.

However far more important then all this Cid is funny and awesome while Cloud is angsty and awkward. Therefore, Cid is the better character and more of a hero.

[Bolivar]

I wouldn't say Cloud is anything, as for much of the game you actually get to choose what he says and does. FFVII introduced actual role playing elements in the series by allowing you to determine the way the protagonist interacts with the rest of the cast, all of this resulting in an actual event that can change, the Gold Saucer date. Of course some of these choice-sets are simply variations on being a dick or a hero, but for the most part you got to determine who Cloud was, especially on the first disc.

Like others have said, Cloud in AC felt really out of place because he was going through the motions of things you felt were already resolved in the game. I guess the GeoStigma thing threw it off balance, but overall I was satisfied with Advent Children for what it intended to do.

[Dante WolfWood]

in ff7, he starts out as a over-confident jackass, then ends up one, mentally screwed up jackass.

in AC, hes an emo jackass.

all in all, hes a jackarse!