The Man in the Black Cape

Final Fantasy VII Playthrough
Playtime: 06:00-08:02

"Am I... human?"
"He continued to read, as if he was possessed by something, and not once did the light in the basement go out."
"I challenged Sephiroth and lived. Why didn't he kill me?"

I completely forgot about all the silly minigames in Junon Town. First, there's having to do CPR on Priscilla, a girl whose entire purpose in the game seems to go no farther than to exist you can save her and get the Shiva materia as a reward. Then there's the part where you have to have the dolphin boost you up to the top of the high voltage tower, which I never seem to get right the first twelve times. Then there's the marching scene, where you basically just have to march in line (I won 6 potions, I don't know if that's good or not, nor remember what I usually get). Now I'm saved on my way to the docks to do drill for Rufus's send off.

Before getting to Junon was the big flashback to Nibelheim with Sephiroth going insane and burning the town. I'm still not entirely sure I get the entirety of the story with Jenova, and the Cetra, and how Sephiroth came to be. You get bits and pieces of it here. The Cetra were the original inhabitants of the planet, but came from elsewhere. Mako is like the physical manifestation of the Cetra's wisdom. Jenova is something that fell from the skies during the time of the ancients and sat in the ground for about 2,000 years before it was pulled out by the Shinra. I know on Disc 2 there's an optional scene where you can find a recording that Professor Galt made going into some of this. Going to have to do that and pay attention. I'm sure there's more explained in the game than I can really recall right now, but even so, I don't think they do as good a job painting the complete picture that they could have. Some of the telling of the background feels incomplete.

Cloud's at level 17 right now as I'm sitting in Junon. I got my first two summoning materias in the form of Shiva and Choco/Mog (the animation for which never fails to make me laugh). Now that I'm starting to accrue some materia, at some point in the near future I'm going to make a post talking about the system, which I think is one of the best magic systems in the series.