Is Sephiroth actually Jenova?

[Dragon Mage]

Oh my my my. Some real clearing up needs to be done here.

Let's start from the beginning shall we, and lay down some facts.

Jenova is an alien, a viral life form that can take any shape it wants. Jenova is no specific 'he' or 'she' but rather Jenova is most firmly an 'it'. The alien being, never before encountered, has powers that aren't human, of which I'll come back to later. A notable aspect of Jenova is that if any cells are separated from the main mass will eventually come back to the body. Whereas humans freely shed millions of skin cells by rubbing an eyelid, Jenova does no such thing. Quite a curiosity. It also has complete control over every individual cell, thus why all the cells eventually come back together when separated--Jenova is actually pulling itself back together again. Jenova is also a very resilient creature, one that, for some reason, can survive the absolute zero temperature of outer space, possibly by using the aforementioned powers.

Next, Jenova came here via space travel. However it skipped the expected space-ship arrival and came to the planet without anything else than itself. Interesting in the least. The northern crater in the game is actually the landing site of Jenova's arrival. Any reference to this reasoning is quite vague. It's unsure as to exactly why Jenova came here, but the intention was not peaceful in the least. When it came here, it took the shape of the indigenous species and played the part of a benevolent being for a time. Eventually it started to act, and showed the people specters of lost loved ones, displaying it's supposed power over the dead. In reality, it was manipulating the knowledge of previous lives/memories immersed within the Lifestream. Using the knowledge, it created illusions, weakening the moral and confusing the populace. Then it began to spread a virus amongst the humans, who at that time were called the Cetra. It could have done this easily by spreading it's own cells throughout the Lifestream and then making it's own cells attack the host. If you've seen FF7: AC, then this would be similar to Geostigma. This virus killed nearly all the Cetra, the guardians and people of the planet, in the most literal sense. With the planet defenseless, and weakened by the crater, Jenova could now take over the planet for whatever purposes it had in mind. Somehow, the remaining Cetra managed to kill Jenova. However, the Cetra race was all but extinct, and it never grew back to its former numbers. Or perhaps, the remaining Cetra was killed along with Jenova in the final battle. Whichever it was, the Cetra population never grew back to its former size and was (technically) extinct. At the same time the planet was creating a defense for itself, the Weapons, but the Cetra managed to kill Jenova before the Weapons were ever released.

Jenova was dumped back in the crater, or possibly some chasm, where it lay, dead, for 2,000 years. Then, some archeologists found it in a dig. Mistaken to be one of the members of the lost Cetra race, the powerful company, Shin Ra, sought to use it's DNA to recreate a living Cetra, to an extent, with the Cetra's powers of finding the Promised Land. The Promised Land was of great interest to Shinra for it was thought that Mako would be abundant there. To do this, they first injected members of SOLDIER, an elite fighting group attached to Shinra with Jenova cells, not only to see what effect it would have, but to get the Promised Land sensing ability as well. However, the Jenova cells had little or no effect on the SOLDIERs. This is because the mind and body reacted to the foreign substance and attacked it, destroying the cells before the cells could do anything. In an attempt to get around the body’s defense, the experiment subjects were submerged in Mako. This brought down the body’s defense—for reasons I’ll explain later—and this brought into being the Sephiroth ‘clones’. However, these ‘clones’ did not posses the ability the Shinra were seeking, so an unborn infant was directly injected with Jenova cells, to work in the alien cells with human DNA--truly fusing the two species together. This is the creation of Sephiroth.

The rest you undoubtedly know, yet I'll do a quick run-through for topics' sake. Sephiroth did not turn out as they expected, still ignorant of the fact that Jenova was not an Ancient/Cetra. When Sephiroth found out that Shin Ra was creating monsters using humans, he snapped, finding out that he was created in a similar way, by the fact that his mother's name and the monsters name in the room of the reactor were the same. The documents in the Shin Ra basement confirmed this. Then Sephiroth went truly mad, horrified and angered that he was the 'rightful heir' to the planet and that these 'weaklings' had done so much harm to his ‘mother’ and himself.

Now, since Jenova was dead, it had no way of ever controlling its body, obviously. Now a little history. You remember when, in Niblehiem, Cloud threw Sephiroth into the Mako below? Well, at that point, Sephiroth ceased to exist in physical form. Through sheer force of will, he didn’t merge into the Lifestream, as normally happens. He used the life-giving powers to re-animate Jenova’s body. He cannot bring Jenova to life, but can imbue it with the power to move. So in all the times you see Sephiroth in the game, it’s not really Sephiroth--it's actually Sephiroth controlling Jenova's body, and making it change shape to look like him. A madman fighting with the puppet of his 'mother's' dead body--which brings up the puppet question, but that's another story for another time.

As Sephiroth has control over all Jenova cells that also means that he has control of the cells that have been injected into countless SOLDIER's, clones, and human experiments. Now this is where Cloud comes in. As he was also experimented on, Jenova cells were also injected into him as well. Sephiroth was able to manipulate the cells to his advantage, mainly in the memory part of the brain.

Now, I'll get back to the power of Jenova. These cells have an adverse affect on human cells, changing normal human cells into something more like Jenova cells. This grants humans some limited powers of Jenova, thus the reason for flying, walking on ceilings, and being unnaturally strong. However, the Mako-immersion process that accompanies the injection of Jenova cells on the experiments has a dramatic effect. The Mako--Lifestream--is filled with the memories of the lives of people long dead, as it is the very spirit energy of hundreds of former lives, and is being recycled over and over. When immersed in Mako that spells bad news-- for thousands of memories of unknown lives is forced into a person's mind, and if that person, like Cloud, wasn't particularly fond of their life, it would be easy to get lost in the flood of memories and literally lose ones own identity. This is what happened to all the previous Sephiroth clones. When one loses their identity like this, the body is unable to defend itself; this allows the Jenova cells to ‘attack’ the human cells, since the body’s immunity system is down. The whole process, on the other hand, did not affect Zack, because he had a life that he liked and had confidence in himself. Thus, he was unaffected by the effects of Mako and his mind and body responded to the Jenova cells and attacked them.

However, Cloud, in some fashion it, is never really explained, manages to get hold of the identity of his deceased friend Zack, and thus thinks he is Zack but with his own past. The two do not mix together very well, and I often refer to this confused Cloud as Zoud (it was better than 'Clack') to keep them straight. Now Sephiroth, who can control all Jenova cells, used the cells in Cloud to mess with his head, quite simply. He used these cells to control Cloud’s mind, which is why he handed over the black materia among other things. It wasn’t really Cloud, it was Sephiroth. I could go on but that's going far off topic and I believe I'll leave it at that.