Questions To Get Your FFX Minds Thinking

[leader of mortals]

Well, I see two different possibilities...

1. The summoner, after summoning the Final Aeon, dies. The Final Aeon is then possessed by Yu Yevon, who works to recover Sin, and in the time it takes him to do this, there is a Calm.

2. The summoner may summon the final aeon as much as they want, and when the previous Final Aeon is killed, all of the Summoner's Aeons attack them(obviously shown in the game), and the Summoner dies this way. The Final Aeon was possesed by Yu Yevon, and so they live after the summoner dies. Yu Yevon works to recover Sin, and in this time there is a Calm.

I've always believed the latter, but I can easily see how both may be possible.

[Formalhaut]

All these talk of final aeons and aeons is hurting my brain!

[Karifean]

@LoM

yuna's aeons only attacked the party because Yu Yevon took control of them. as he does with the final aeon. the summoner simply dies when he summons the final aeon, it is never explained why. so i think the 1st possibility is correct.

what i think is that if a final aeon is not used, it will slowly lose its enormous power, become a normal aeon and is sealed into a stone statue. or yunalesca just has the ability to make people into normal fayth instead of final aeon fayth as well.

[auronlu]

1. The game never states how long Calms were. We know they were short, because SIn has returned within ten years.

The game gives us the following evidence:
-- At last year's tournament, Wakka got the news that Chappu was killed. After that, he signed up as guardian to Zuke. That means Sin was around a little over a year before gametime.
-- Also, Lulu went on a pilgrimage before Zuke's with Lady Ginnem. That had to have taken a few weeks to a few months.

So Braska's Calm lasted less than 9 years, but the game doesn't tell how much.

The Ultimania Guide, which is not canon but was written by game developers, adds the sad detail that Braska's Calm lasted ONLY A YEAR.

What with the previous Summoner being 100 years earlier, I don't know why anyone bothered!


2. See FFX-2. I don't like it, but it's canon: the temples were pretty well abandoned, although some pious old-fashioned Yevonites still came to worship in them, at least in Kilika and Besaid. That's typical of RL: people in less urban areas cling to older traditions longer.

3. As others have said, Anima is Seymour's Final Aeon.

Final Aeons are especially powerful because of the unique, personal bond between summoner and aeon: a bond of love that is between two individual souls.

Whereas regular aeons do not have a personal connection to a particular summoner. Their fayths reside in temples, and any good summoner can acquire them. But it makes sense that the spiritual connection is not as strong.

The problem with Anima is that, instead of using her to defeat Sin, as Seymour's mother told him to do, Seymour decided NOT to die, NOT to defeat Sin. He wanted to stick around until he found a way to CONTROL Sin -- as he was controlling Anima! He used Anima as a tool. She was impressive and terrifying, since she was stronger than a normal aeon.

Apparently, in order to keep her around, Seymour had to have her bound into a regular fayth statue. I'm not sure if this was done with normal Final Aeons. Probably, unless you created a fayth statue for it, as soon as you summoned a final aeon out of a guardian's body, the guardian's body died, so there was no physical place to store the aeon for later summons.* Snce Yu Yevon always took over a Final Summoning before it could be dismissed, it didn't matter -- it didn't need a fayth statue to anchor it.

However, Anima had one. Seymoure hid it in Baaj Island, where he and his mother had been exiled. Apparently there was an old, lost temple there -- at the beginning of the game Tidus swims through the flooded outer courtyard complete with summoner statues (Braska's isn't there), and the place where he makes fire looks like a typical temple Great Hall. So Seymour stashed his mother there.

Yuna was able to use Anima because Seymour's mother gave her permission to, but those were very unusual circumstances. I am guessing that is probably the first time in the history of Spira that one summoner acquired another summoner's Final Aeon.


The Ultimania Guide confirms that Anima was a Final Aeon and that Seymour smuggled its fayth statue to Baaj.

*I'm guessing that Jecht at game's end was technically unsent after his aeon was defeated. He doesn't stick around for more than a minute after his aeon is destroyed.

Why did a summoner always die during a Final Summoning?

We are never told, but it's pretty clear the Final Aeon is huge and dangerous and not very in-control. The battles between Sin and Final Aeons opened canyons and carved huge craters in the Calm Lands. It's easy to understand why no summoner close to such a conflict would survive. It is also possible, although canon doesn't state it, that Yu Yevon ordered the Final Aeon to kill the summoner, thus ensuring no one could give away his secret.


Leader of the illuminati -- I don't think all of a summoner's aeons normally showed up to the final battle. That was a special plan devised by Tidus, Yuna, and Bahamut's fayth. Bahamut asked Yuna to summon all her aeons, tricking Yu Yevon into jumping from one to another until they were all destroyed. That forced him out so they could fight him "unarmored". The fayth didn't come until Yuna called them. And normally, a summoner would not bother with that tedious procedure: a summoner would just call the Final Aeon that was supposed to win the battle.