Sephiroth's Villain Origins | Final Fantasy VII

Sephiroth's Villain Origins | Final Fantasy VII

Welcome to MojoPlays, and today we’re looking back at the history of Sephiroth, where he came from, what he did, and what he was capable of doing. This is the villain origin of Sephiroth. This should go without saying, but spoiler warning ahead.

Introduction

To make the timeline of Sephiroth easier, we will be discussing all of Sephiroth's appearances in chronological order, rather than the order in which the games and film were released. That being said, we will make one exception by quickly mentioning his first official appearance now, before we jump back in time.

There probably isn’t a gamer alive who doesn’t at least KNOW the name Sephiroth, appearing in not only Final Fantasy, but also in games like Kingdom Hearts, and Super Smash Bros. But before these entries, Sephiroth got his start by appearing as the main villain of the game he is most well known for, Final Fantasy VII. That might have sounded like a very condescending and obvious sentence, but let’s pretend like some of our viewers know nothing before you Masamune me through the pee-hole.

For fans of the Final Fantasy VII Remake, you may not know that in the original 1997 game, it wasn’t until after leaving Midgar and making your way to Kalm, that Sephiroth made his first on-screen appearance. When Cloud discusses his history with Sephiroth, we enter the (now famous) Nibelheim flashback sequence which shows us who Sephiorth was, what he became, and how he became it. But, we’ll talk more about that later. The takeaway here is that Sephiroth was mentioned for a lot of the Midgar section, but was never actually seen, as opposed to the Remake where he was seen constantly. The only thing the player saw was the path of destruction he left, creating this sense of dread leading up to his eventual appearance, and then surprise that he seemed to be just a man. But what kind of man is capable of lifting a 3-story giant serpent into the air, and skewering it with a tree? Sephiroth, that’s who.

Sephiroth

With the information provided within the games, we know that Sephiroth was born somewhere between 1977 and 1982. Sephiroth was the product of Professor Hojo's Project S, one of the projects under Professor Gast’s Jenova Project, begun under the false assumption that Jenova was a Cetra. There’s so many names and words there that are important to fully understand the world surrounding Sephiroth, so throughout this video, we’re gonna adopt a quick fire rule where I can quickly try to rattle of hours’ worth of lore in a matter of seconds and you guys aren’t allowed to leave mean comments when I skip over stuff to keep this video cohesive… you got it? Let’s go! Professor Hojo, who ran the project S, is a significant antagonist in FF7, even though his appearance there is obviously YEARS after Sephiroth's birth, as he is an adult in Final Fantasy VII. Professor Gast worked closely with Hojo, and although he was a major player in the questionable Project S, he was still considered morally good. Jenova is an ancient organism that was retrieved to use in Project S to create another Cetra like her (although as we previously mentioned, it was later revealed that Jenova was in fact NOT a Cetra, and they had been working under false information). Cetra, otherwise known as ancients, are an ancient civilisation of people who are now long dead. There are so very few people with Cetra blood in their veins that a good chunk of Final Fantasy VII antagonist activity is dedicated to kidnapping Aerith, who is half Cetra. Okay, back to Sephiroth’s conception.

Lucrecia Crescent, the assistant to Professor Hojo on the project, conceived Sephiroth, while Hojo injected the cells of Jenova onto Sephiroth while she was still pregnant, with the goal of creating a human with ancient abilities. Without even having the chance to hold her own child, Lucrecia and Sephiroth were instantly separated after his birth. Although Sephiroth didn't gain the abilities of an Ancient as envisioned, he was deemed a superior subject to Genesis and Angeal (two other babies conceived under similar circumstances), and research on Project S continued into the development of SOLDIER. Wait a minute, Mat, what the heck is SOLDIER? Well, my jubbly little friends, according to wikipedia “SOLDIER is the elite fighting force of the Shinra Electric Power Company in the Final Fantasy VII universe. Its members are advanced super-soldiers with superhuman strength, speed, and agility. Much stronger than the Shinra Peacekeeping Troops and the Turks, Shinra deploys SOLDIER for special missions that require the greatest use of strength.” Some call me lazy, I call me efficient... And lazy.

Sephiroth’s upbringing and education all took place under Hojo's guidance, where he absorbed the belief that a proficient SOLDIER must possess strength in body, mind, and spirit, viewing a steely resolve devoid of hesitation as signs of true strength. To instill this, Hojo subjected Sephiroth to intense physical suffering, pushing him to endure just a criminal amount of agony to unlock his full potential. It doesn’t take an advanced degree in family psychology to know that if you raise a child in this environment, they’re probably gonna grow up with a passionate interest in taxidermy. Luckily, Sephiroth skipped all that and went straight to cutting people up on the battlefield.

Sephiroth's first field assignment was to the archipelago of Rhadore, once a Shinra ally. His first engagement involved swiftly dispatching a legion of Rhadoran soldiers upon helicopter insertion. The SOLDIER team already engaging in this battle were made up of veterans from Project 0: Glenn Lodbrok, Matt Winsord, and Lucia Lin. These were some of the original SOLDIERS, and Sephiroth (on his first field assignment) wiped out their enemy in a matter of moments. Due to his immense power and ability, Sephiroth took command of the team and led them in infiltrating an underground Rhadoran base within the Logues Ruins. Throughout the mission, he grappled with the dissonance between Shinra's idealized heroism and his personal desires for familial connection and normalcy, and in particular, finding his mother.

As the harsh realities of conflict weighed heavily on his conscience, Sephiroth found solace and guidance from his comrades, who encouraged him to wield his considerable power with empathy. His bond with Glenn and the team, alongside interactions with the Rhadoran Rosen, played a pivotal role in shaping his character and future path. Now, I fully understand that this was a very quick way of explaining the deep, and frustratingly intricate story of his younger years, and there is still so much we could dive into, and I’m still not totally convinced I shouldn’t explain what Project 0 was, but if we don’t move on we’ll be here all day. In summation… Sephiroth = Strong, but it’s not fair because he was juicing in the womb. Let’s keep going.

Sephiroth The War Hero

Sephiroth rose to notoriety as a celebrated war hero across the globe, handpicked to serve as the face of a Shinra recruitment campaign aimed at sourcing candidates for the prestigious SOLDIER program. This recruitment program, and Sephiroth himself, were at this time grabbing the attention of a little known video game protagonist by the name of Cloud Strife, who would eventually join Shinra. Now, we’re here to focus on Sephiroth, but it’s worth mentioning Cloud at this point to show that the recruitment campaigns were working, and grabbing the attention of small town folk like Cloud and Tifa. Even though Sephiroth displayed an otherworldly set of skills and strength, a myriad of achievements and honors were concocted to portray him as a hero long before he ever set foot on the battlefield. They were all achievable for him, but fake nonetheless.

Forging close bonds with fellow First Class SOLDIER members Genesis and Angeal, the trio frequently engaged in epic sparring sessions within the VR training room. During one such session, Genesis insisted on a one-on-one duel with Sephiroth, resulting in a minor injury that triggered Genesis's degradation. It’s not worth our time to get into degradation as S-type SOLDIERS like Cloud, Zack, and our dear boy Sephiroth DO NOT suffer from degradation, it’s G-type SOLDIERS like Angeal and Genesis that do. So let’s forget that word and focus on something else - Oh my god look, Crisis Core! Isn’t it shiny and cool? Let’s look at that instead.

Now that we’re entering the era of Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, we should talk briefly about Zack Fair… Zack Fair is a SOLDIER you play as in Crisis Core… Okay, moving on. (Zack is actually a major player in the lore of Final Fantasy VII, but the joke still works). During the final days of the Wutai War, Sephiroth intervened during Angeal and Zack Fair's raid on Fort Tamblin. He rescued Zack from an Ifrit summoned by Genesis's clones, and it was here that Sephiroth suggested that both Genesis and Angeal had defected from SOLDIER and Shinra, Angeal was a close mentor of Zack, and this information left him in complete disbelief. Sephiroth defended the Shinra Building against two assaults orchestrated by Genesis’s forces. While tracking Angeal to Mako Reactor 5, Sephiroth proposed to Zack that they intentionally fail to neutralize him, a plan Zack enthusiastically agreed to; at the reactor, Sephiroth opened up to Zack about their shared history. In facing another assault targeting Hojo, Sephiroth and Zack defended, with Sephiroth maintaining a sarcastic facade of indifference when a perplexed Angeal came to their aid.

The Nibelheim Incident

Not only is the Nibelheim Incident one of the most famous moments in Final Fantasy, but it’s one of the most famous moments in all of gaming. The Nibelheim Incident within the universe of Final Fantasy VII, is the meeting point for a lot of different games, the overlapping point for many characters and many experiences, the end of some journeys, the beginning of others, the catalyst for events to follow, and the reason others came to a close, and for this video in particular, the Nibelheim Incident may be the single most important moment in sephiroth's story. Now, as it becomes clear in the original version of Final Fantasy VII, the Nibelheim incident is described and visited a couple of times, each with slightly different variations, and claims from characters like Tifa, that some versions of the story aren’t accurate. It’s not till the ending of Final Fantasy VII that we learn the true story. The variations in story however, never really affect what Sephiroth experiences at Nibelheim; whether it’s the original telling, or the final telling, Sephiroth follows essentially the same path. For this video, we are just going to focus on the truth, and not the different version of this story, so if you have yet to complete Final Fantasy VII, you may want to stop the video here. Towards the end of Crisis Core, and 6 years before Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth and Zack received orders to investigate the Nibel Reactor, where reports of missing workers and SOLDIER operators, as well as the presence of numerous monsters, had surfaced. The investigation team consisted of Sephiroth, Zack Fair, and two infantrymen, one of whom was Cloud Strife. The team arrived in Nibelheim, with Sephiroth inquiring about Cloud's feelings upon returning to his hometown. When Zack asked if Sephiroth had any family, Sephiroth evaded the question, simply stating that his mother's name was Jenova. The group was guided up Mt. Nibel to the Nibel Reactor by a local named Tifa Lockhart, during which a villager took a photo of Sephiroth, Zack, and Tifa.

At the mako reactor, Sephiroth and Zack discovered remnants of Professor Hojo's experiments, including pods filled with makonoids and the pod at the top of the room containing Jenova. Overwhelmed by the realization that he might have been created in a similar manner, Sephiroth experienced a breakdown. Genesis then appeared, revealing Sephiroth's origins in the Jenova Project and asking for his assistance with his degradation. Sephiroth rejected Genesis and left for the Shinra Manor basement, where he obsessively studied Hojo's project files for seven consecutive days. Sephiroth, believing himself to be the last of the Cetra and resentful towards humanity for an unspecified past disaster, unleashed his rage by setting Nibelheim ablaze, resulting in the deaths of many, including Claudia Strife, and Brian Lockhart, the parents of Cloud Strife, and Tifa Lockhart. Tifa, wielding Sephiroth's Masamune found beside her father's corpse, attempted to confront him but was swiftly disarmed and wounded. Zack also engaged Sephiroth in combat but was ultimately defeated, relinquishing his Buster Sword in the process. Seizing the opportunity, Cloud took up Zack's sword and struck Sephiroth while he was momentarily distracted. In the ensuing struggle, Cloud impaled Sephiroth and hurled him into the lifestream. To conceal the truth of the incident, Sephiroth was declared "killed in action," while Professor Hojo utilized the unconscious Zack and Cloud for an experiment to test his Reunion Theory.

Things Get Weird

Over the ensuing years, Sephiroth's consciousness traversed the lifestream. The fragments of his essence congregated at the Northern Cave within the North Crater, gradually reforming Sephiroth's physical form within a cocoon of mako. From within, Sephiroth wielded control over Jenova's cells, using them as an extension of his being to manipulate individuals injected with Jenova cells, effectively turning them into Sephiroth-clones under his sway. It’s worth making clear from here on, and for the majority of the original Final Fantasy VII, that you only ever face clones of sephiroth, controlled by Sephiroth from his Mako cocoon at the North Crater. This fact isn’t revealed till late in the game, but for all intents and purposes, Sephiroth faced death that day in Nibelheim, and only lived on through the lifestream for the events following. Basically, he sits on his arse for the rest of his story.

Final Fantasy VII

Approximately five years after his presumed demise, Sephiroth initiated his scheme to manipulate the Sephiroth-clones for his reunion, aiding him in merging with the lifestream and seizing control of it to attain godhood. So many non-Final Fantasy fans, or Final Fantasy haters, will shake their heads at this plot, exclaiming “What? What does that even mean? That doesn’t make sense, that's so convoluted.” And to those people we say, “Are you a tiny baby?” Towards the end of the Midgar section of Final Fantasy VII, Cloud and the gang storm the Shinra building, and it’s in this section that Sephiroth uses the headless remains of Jenova to manifest his form within the Shinra Building, where he goes on to assassinate President Shinra, free Cloud's party, and leave a trail of destruction in his wake. This version of Sephiroth will from here on out be referred to as Sephiroth-Jenova. Progressing northward, the Sephiroth-Jenova entity encountered and defeated a Midgar Zolom, with Cloud's party in pursuit. Remember? That’s the snake getting pierced by the tree. Remember the thing I said at the start, guys? You still with me?

Further into the game, and aboard a cargo ship bound for Costa del Sol, Sephiroth-Jenova encountered Cloud's party but displayed no recognition of Cloud, because you know… He doesn’t really know who Cloud is, and I just realised that information isn’t pertinent right now because I didn’t explain any of the fake flashback stories… ANYWAYS! Departing abruptly, he left behind a mutated arm of Jenova, which transformed into Jenova BIRTH. The next time Sephiroth-Jenova ran into them was when Cloud and the party visited Nibelheim and encountered Sephiroth-Jenova in the Shinra Manor basement, where Jenova urged Cloud to follow.

I understand we are jumping very quickly through Final Fantasy VII, but in my defense the majority of that game is about Cloud, and right now, we DGAF about Cloud. In search of the Black Materia, Sephiroth-Jenova targeted the Black Materia from the Temple of the Ancients, incapacitating Tseng (of the Turks, a group we’ve spent zero time explaining in this video) and manipulating Cloud into relinquishing the artifact. Sephiroth revealed his grand plan to use the Black Materia to summon Meteor, compelling the planet to heal itself with the lifestream, allowing him to merge with it and ascend to divinity, AKA God status, AKA Sephijesus, AKA Big Daddy Seph Seph. With the Black Materia secured, Sephiroth-Jenova proceeded to the North Crater.

Something else happens later in the game that involves Sephiroth-Jenova… What is it? Something big? OH YEAH! Sephiroth-Jenova stabs Aerith through the f*cking back while she attempted to summon Holy, thwarting her efforts to save the planet. Aerith was in fact successful in summoning Holy, but Sephiroth's influence restrained its full potential till the reveal at the end of the game that it actually worked, because ebs and flows, and storytelling, and drama, you know? Sephiroth-Jenova engaged Cloud's party in combat within the Whirlwind Maze, ultimately discarding the Sephiroth-Jenova form in favor of Jenova DEATH. In a final act of manipulation, Sephiroth coerced Cloud into surrendering the Black Materia to his cocoon form, summoning Meteor and awakening the planet's guardians (known as Weapons) before descending deeper into the crater. I should let you know, we’ve just jumped across about 10 hours of gameplay in a few sentences.

The events culminate in "The Planet's Judgment," where Cloud's party confronts Sephiroth at the core of the Northern Cave. Sephiroth revealed his Bizarro Sephiroth and Safer Sephiroth forms, engaging in a fierce battle against Cloud's party. Though defeated, Sephiroth's consciousness persisted, engaging Cloud in a metaphysical struggle for control until Cloud prevailed, causing Sephiroth to dissolve into the lifestream.

With Sephiroth vanquished, Holy was released from the planet's core, aided by Aerith's spirit, effectively neutralizing Meteor and averting catastrophe. THE END! Right? Well well well. Just as we thought Sephiroth was dead, and we could end this video, we reveal that ONCE AGAIN, he continued living on, but this time through pure and unfiltered nerd spazzing.

Advent Children

Sephiroth managed to evade dissolving fully within the lifestream by channeling his intense hatred towards Cloud. As the lifestream rose to confront the impending threat of Meteor, Sephiroth seized the opportunity by dispersing his memories into the lifestream, thereby infecting the planet with Geostigma. Utilizing these fragmented memories, he orchestrated the creation of the Remnants of Sephiroth, imbued with the memories others held of him, and dispatched them to seek out Jenova's remains, facilitating his resurrection. This was the nerd rage I was talking about.

In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, the global spread of Geostigma ravaged the world. The Remnants of Sephiroth, Loz, Kadaj, and Yazoo pursued Jenova's cells under the guise of reuniting with their mother, unknowingly serving Sephiroth's agenda. Kadaj, upon assimilating Jenova's cells, transformed into Sephiroth, marking the rebirth of the malevolent entity.

Sephiroth confronted Cloud once more amidst the ruins of Midgar, expressing disappointment at Cloud's recovery from Geostigma. Revealing his grand design, Sephiroth aimed to amass the souls of Geostigma's victims to corrupt the lifestream and dominate the planet, intending to utilize it as a vessel for interstellar travel in his quest for domination over new worlds. I love Final Fantasy VII, but I’ll admit it, Sephiroth getting a little out of hand here.

Despite heavily injuring Cloud by impaling him, Cloud ultimately emerged victorious, vanquishing Sephiroth. In his final moments, Sephiroth defiantly proclaimed his determination to transcend mere memory before fading into oblivion, leaving a weakened Kadaj to perish in his place. To wrap up this story, and with Sephiroth now defeated, Aerith's spirit invoked healing rain to cleanse the planet of Geostigma's taint. Congratulations gang, not only are we done with Sephiroth's story, but we also achieved my lifelong goal of ending a Mojo video with the word “taint”.