Quote Originally Posted by Spooniest View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Jiro View Post
A foil for Aerith
Intriguing.

Aerith is kind, gentle, frail and wears a pink dress. Tifa, on the other hand, is robust, tough, and wears shorts and a tank top.
This is bollocks! Tifa is kinder and gentler than Aeris, easily. Sure, when fighting you could say that applies, but certainly not in storyline. People are too quick to look at clothes and jobs and then assume personality traits. I love that Tifa & Aeris both break stereotype when it comes to personality vs. appearances. Just look at what they're like on the Golden Saucer dates and pretty much any other time they interact. Aeris is outgoing, energetic, direct. Tifa is introverted, shy and caring.
But in the end, Aerith turns out to have been the more spiritually powerful of the two. I think people forget what happens right as Tifa enters the Lifestream...

It's kind of disturbing. We get to see Tifa confronted with personal demons of hers as she begins to hear the voices of the planet for the first time. She begins to try to run away, but doesn't get anywhere.

In a way, Tifa's identity is being examined as much as Cloud's is.
While I agree with "spirtually stronger", that's fairly irrelevant to mental strength for the most part. It's hard to say that Aeris is mentally stronger than Tifa when their experiences are so very different. Aeris may have had hardship in her life, but just five years ago Tifa watched her friends and family get murdered and her entire town burned to the ground, and then Cloud pops up - who was there at the time - and acts like everything was different. If I were her, I'd get pretty mentally smurfed by that too. I'd wager such experiences would have a much more traumatising impact on Aeris than what we see of Aeris' memorable youth. Therefore, at the moment Tifa overcomes such things, you could argue that she is mentally stronger than any. She also is mentally strong enough to help Cloud go through his struggles simultaneously, which is no small achievement.

Of course, it probably helps that Aeris can 'speak' to the spirits of her lost ones through prayer or something, too. xD