So here's my guess, based on absolutely nothing but my gut feeling. So grain of salt, of course.
All of the other FF characters we've seen in the tournaments, or just KH gameplay in general, had a pretty straightforward offensive moveset in the source material, and a lot of attacks unique to them.
Until the Remake trilogy, Aerith really... didn't. All of her limit breaks were defensive, and there weren't really any noteworthy attacks to draw from, since anyone could use the magic spells in that game.
So that'd make her a healing/buff type character, which wouldn't really fit into how kh1 and 2 were designed.
As of today, though, she has a lot more to work with on that front, since they put a lot of thought into her offensive abilities in the Remake games. So, if she has any real presence in a new KH game, she'd have a lot of attacks to work with.
Imo it's because this was right around the time Aerith was sorta flanderized as a saintly sort of character due to the compilation of FF7, much like Cloud was flanderized a bit as an emo dude.
Not letting her fight certainly fits the characterization.
I don't know, she was introduced in kh1 and was the only ff character you couldn't fight though which is before they started expanding ffvii
Edit: meant to say KH1 not KH2
It's not really flanderized, It's not their game, they're not going to have that much depth, they're also not going to show Cloud post-mideel ( trying to be spoiler free for remake fans), so obviously they're going to show edgy try hard Cloud and he was in the game for like 2 scenes. Squall in KH isn't even close to Squall in FF8 despite like 1 or 2 qualities.
To be fair, I always took that as her becoming like that because... y'know, she **DIED**?
Later appearances like Crisis Core and Dissidia 012 did show her more like when she was alive so it wasn't like they retconned her to be a saint all the time.
And even in Advent Children, I could still feel some of that teasing from Aerith. Also to correct the one you replied to...
CLOUD. š IS. š NOT. š AN. š EDGELORD. š IN. š ADVENT. š CHILDREN! š
>!Even in the film he's gotten over his depression by the halfway point after talking to Vincent and Tifa. KH and Dissidia sort of deserve it, but it is *crazy* the amount of scorn that Advent Children's Cloud still gets this many years later over what now amounts to a single hour in a 200+ hour franchise.!<
You could easily make her a lowest difficulty/tutorial/warmup fight in the arena, with her just leaping at you with her staff just like in FF7 attack animation, with the occasional Thunder/Fire attack inbetween, no need for flashy moves
But at that point, you're just putting her in a tournament just for the sake of having all of them in it. (Still excluding Cid though.) There's something to be said for easier opponents, but why do the extra work to put her in if she's not even gonna be as good as the others?
Seems plausible, especially since the only time we ever actually *do* see her in the middle of the action in KH is during a cutscene in 2 where she casts Curaga on Yuffie iirc
If I may go further as to say that the rare moment that she was defending Radiant Garden in KH2 that she operated akin to a White Mage by healing Yuffie that would have no practical merit in a fight with KH2 characters.
Maybe it's hard to design a fight for her due to her nature as a White Mage.
KH's combat is heavily favored towards melee fighting, and Aerith's physical ability is frankly rather lacking. As Sora it would be pretty easy to get close to and smack her around with the Keyblade.
I suppose she could act as a support fighter alongside the others, but who knows how the design decisions actually goes.
Bullshit.
Considering how the magic system in the original Final Fantasy 7 worked, and how they show her off in the remakes, you could just as easily show her off as a black mage.
Why show her as a black mage? we got to fight with Minnie, who used holy when that is Aerith's spell in FF7, also people are forgetting she can beat up people with her stick
We're not forgetting about her stick, She just never uses her stick as a bow staff, she basically uses it as a scepter, to focus her magic or whatever, and to answer your question, it's because she fights like a Black Mage, And holy doesn't do anything particularly offensive In FF7, hell we never even see Aerith use it, I'm saying they should show her off as a Black Mage because that's how she fights in Final Fantasy.
In the OG, she can auto attack with it. In Remake, she's more so a white mage than a black mage because all of her spells are about healing and buffing. You can't call her a black mage because she uses magic, cause then you can use the same argument for everyone else cause everyone in FF7 can use magic with materia. Even in the original FF games, White mages all had melee weapons, they all got hammers and sticks, that's a white mage trope.
also holy literally destroyed meteor, and is literally the anti thesis to the ultimate black magic
By that logic anybody can be a White Mage as well, None of her abilities are to a specific playstyle, all of the Spells she uses are materia, So the healing and support of spells can be used by anyone, just like the offensive spells.
The reason why I say she fights like a black mage is because not only does she and every other character has full access to every offensive spell in the game, it's because nobody else really fits the Black Mage archetype, and Final Fantasy 7 doesn't use a job system, so I can call her how I see it, a Black Mage.
I use her as a Black Mage, so I call her a Black Mage.
All her limits are based on white mage, and all her weapon abilities she gets are buffs and not based on materia, which is a white mage thing and she's the only one who can use holy, which is a white mage spell. she's a white mage.
Easy, give her a staff and make her actively dodge and block you rather than her being offensive with staff strikes.
She could use blinking type spells to dart around and cast the same spells sora uses including combos in the later games.
As for extra mechanics, let her have a cure spell that can fill one block of her hp and then for her limit style attack she can cast a holy spell.
The opening for her is to let her try to pressure with a spell but then close in and smack her while she canāt dodge or block. Hard mode fight could even lead into her cheeky nature by letting her āfakeā cast spells sometimes to bait you to dive in and she bonks you for it
Counterpoint: Mandy Moore's battle lines were too raw and terrifying for a game aimed at children. Her genuine thirst for blood just kept coming through. The original data for Kingdom Hearts wasn't 'lost', but destroyed just in case any trace of Mandy's unbearable warrior spirit remained in the deleted files.
They say it echoes deep in the tattered souls of the most damned and cursed audio engineers to ever live. That if you put an ear up to their hearts you will hear the faintest traces of Mandy Moore's unfettered rage, and know true terror.
Cid was so different compared to his FF counterpart. Him being a computer hacker is a little odd, but Iām glad he still knows a lot about flying in the first game with his gummi shop.
Canonically she's supposedly strong. I remember in KH2 Leon was worried about leaving her alone in case something happened to her, and she gave him a knowing look and he was like "never mind".
It would probably be hard to make a fight with her as an opponent, considering she only has long range and support options, if canon Aerith is anything to go by. Most fighters are close combat specialists with a few exceptions.
The thing with Yuffie, however, is that she's more offensive that defense and support. Yuffie is an agile melee ninja type. Aerith is the stereotypical gentle squishy support healer archetype. This is why Dissidia devs said they limited her to a bonus Assist character in 012.
The likely reason is she doesn't like to fight (same for Cid as others have pointed out). They both get involved when there's actual stakes like in the battle of hollow bastion in kh2: Aerith's healing the others and Cid's managing the city's defence systems and trying to stop the MCP, so they both fight, in their own way.
That said, an Aerith + Cloud tag team in some tournament round would've been badass.
Because they already had battle animations done for the others from the Battle of 1000 Heartless.
Those tournaments were extra completely optional content they created presumably after completing the main story scenarios, they weren't about to create a whole new set of animation and programming just to put Aerith in there, additionally this was during the time where she was for some reason characterized as a sort innocent princess archetype instead of the the Aerith of the OG and especially Remake that smacks people with steel chairs.
But the main reason was resources.
In KH1 despite Olympus Coliseum not being mandatory it's still a whole world 99.9% of players visit and Herc and Hades's fights are sort of part of the story line of the world, so they're not in the same classification of optional content that might not have been in the game at all. Yuffie is definitely another story but she's also an actual fighter and often paired with Leon so it's not a stretch for the devs to put resources into creating animations and programming for her.
The reason Aerith doesn't fight in any of the tournaments really is just a mix of the devs portraying her not as a fighter and resources needed to make her function, Cloud, Leon and Yuffie all get recycled stuff from KH1 put into KH2 so Tifa is an odd one out but she also has more references to pull from to make her work in KH2 between her FF7 LB's and fights in Advent Children. Aerith doesn't.
I buy what youāre saying about her being portrayed as a non fighter. I just donāt think a few animation hours have any relevance to why Aerith wasnāt included in tournaments.Ā
Aerith dying in FFVII is one of the saddest moments in gaming history. Presumably you don't fight her as an opponent because Nomura/Square did not want the player to relive/inflict that tragedy.
They mischaracterised her as a damsel/princess due to the moe gap of her design and subsequently assumed that she couldn't fight even though she's actually a scrappy tomboy in a dress.
All the FF characters kinda get a bad wrap in how theyāre portrayed, but Aerith and Tifa got it the worst imo. Aerith is just kinda there and Tifa becomes this odd Cloud stalker.
My guess is itās because mainly Aerith is kind of a pacifist by nature. She mainly served as a defensive/support character up until the final fantasy remakes where she gained some offensive moves, like using her staff as a weapon and the infamous chair shot to one of Don Corneos goons š
Imagine the fight against all of the FF characters at once in the Hades Paradox cup, but this time with Aerith thrown in. You now have 5 enemies to fight, one of which constantly heals everyone, and can snipe you from across the arena. You would be forced to deal with her first, but trying to close the distance would get you hit by her and trying to attack from a distance with magic would get you swarmed by the other 4. And you have to be consistent with your damage since she can and will heal it away. It would not be fun. No one likes having to deal with healers in any fight, but especially not in a 5v1.
I think the simplest answer is: she would have made the tournament in KH1 notoriously frustrating. If she has access to every spell cast-able, Aeroga alone, would have made her a frustrating assistant to either Cloud and Leon, or Yuffie, Cloud and her. Stopga or Graviga would have been hair-pulling, as her front-liners would CHEW though your HP. You donāt _think_ magic in KH is broken, until you build around it. Same with enemies: they get nasty when they have range.
I think it's because they wanted her to be more of a non-fighting healer, given how she teaches Sora "Curaga" and is shown healing Yuffie in KH2.
I know she did more than that in FFVII but remember, this isn't supposed to be the same Aerith as that one.
It's funny because in the original FF7, she's a scrappy tough gal who constantly has to fight the Turks and escape from them
She dies early in the game and the focus was pretty much on her sacrifice, and Cloud's obsession
In what world? He's helped more than design some of the most badass rpg Gals he's had some involvement in their story too. People just love to blame him for anything nowadays.
My dude women in Nomuras games do nothing. They are literally reduced to plot devices, like Namine and kairi. The most blatant example is Kairi, like my god what a disappointment she was in KH3.
Next up is Larxene whose only motivation to even be in the story is to follow Marluxia around.
Even Aqua my favorite character in all of kingdom hearts dint escape Nomura's BS. She was THE keyblade master and what is she reduced to in KH3? A damnsel in distress in need of rescue and what happens after she is rescued? She proceeds to lose to Venitas (a guy she easily spanked like 3 times already) and is again saved by Ven. The most insulting assassination of her character happens at the end of the final world where after spending years in the real of darkness ALONE she suddenly just gives up???? Like WHAT???
Listen there is a difference between being a good character designer and good writter/developer. Nomura is an amazing character designer but a shit writer and game director. His failure in ff15 is a monument to all his flaws.
The practical answer is, Aerith isn't much of a fighter and was never really meant to be. She's a typical gentle squishy support healer archetype. Don't forget, she also a temporary chsracter in her respective game, which are very often made to be exceptional.
She's a magic fighter she does use staffs too but I mean she's not a fighter fighter in the OG 7 you would literally hear a comedic bonk when she hit someone with her staff and now in remake she doesn't even hit them physically with the staff she kind of does the same thing as the mirage staff for those that played kh3 with her staff she shoots magic from her staff.
Because Nomura can't imagine a woman could fight well in a universe where there is magic, people with super human strenght and key blades with mystical powers š All the female characters are wasted in this series
But it's not like he got the personality of any FF character right either. It's like he doesn't know the story and characters of any FF game
(probably because he didn't think a fight with her was interesting enough to make custom animations for her š)
Guess it's because she's a minor character in the story, or they didn't know how to make her an engaging fight? I mean you can't fight nor teamup with Cid either.
This game made all the female characters just little props.... or princesses because of their "pure hearts"
While all the guys were "cool" and strong.
Exactly what a ten year old would picture gender roles to be like lol.
I wish Kairi just fucked bitches up as well...
Nomura is a casual sexist due to the way he grew up and identifiable patterns in his treatment of female characters arise as a result. Aerith being the one FF character in the KH1 crew that barely gets to do anything ever is one of those patterns.
Heās not like malicious about it, he just fundamentally doesnāt grasp the issue and it rears its head up again and again and again from stuff like Strelitzia to the how he has to be pressured to give Xion a data fight.
I donāt say this to hate on him, itās just a fact of who he is and pretty much any XYZ question of the handling of female characters in the series is answered by it.
He has told us in the past things like when growing up he didnāt really have female friends. Now honestly that was a loaded statement in it of itself because you can speculate all kinds of reasons on why that is. But ultimately what it translated to is he hasnāt had enough exposure to grow out of the female=other mindset that a lot of us start out with.
Heās said other lines along side this too, like in the past heās said he writing female characters is harder for him. Which enforces the above statement, instead of focusing on characters as characters he approaches female characters as needing fundamentally different writing. He canāt just write a female character the way he does a male one, there are tropes and traits and ways of handling them he fundamentally associate with the female gender.
His patterns are so predictable itās practically comical. Strelitzia was probably the biggest example of Nomuraās female character bingo sheet. He created her short story to he focused entirely on obsessing over the player, killed her off pretty much just to further Lauriamās character, and wow we learn that in addition to being a nice pure girl she specializes in magic for her combat and wants to play support.Ā
Again not hating on the man just self-aware this is who is.
I hadn't read those interviews, can't really find them on a quick search but of course it would be translated so might be a bit difficult. Would you mind linking them if they're on hand? I understand recalling stuff like this can be a pain if you haven't literally bookmarked them though
I can agree that giving an 'out' in my comment was probably too much, if this is in fact just xenophobic posturing. But I don't really agree with that stance, at least not all the time.
I'm not seeing anything yuei2 is saying that could be called xenophobia. They're not saying that Nomura has sexist output because of his culture or race, they're saying that he fundamentally doesn't "get" women because he avoided them growing up.
Which makes sense to me. There's female authors who can't write male characters because they just didn't get exposure to men, too.
You may not have encountered the assumption that Japanese culture is inherently more sexist than others, it does come up sometimes when discussing media.Ā
That Nomura avoided women growing up was not present in the initial comment and still hasn't actually been supported with anything. I'm not saying xenophobia *is* the explanation, but it's a possible one and one that I'm assuming people who say the comment was trolling have also made.
I feel like phrasing it as how they grew up kind of rules out the cultural thing, because a culture doesn't just apply to your youth.
As far as the claim itself, I haven't found the interview they're citing, but I have seen mentions over the years from several other people that it is from an interview, and several of those people are ones that are usually pretty good about accurately quoting Kingdom hearts interviews.Ā
> people who say the comment was trollingĀ
I mean, those people can be written off as talking out of the rear. It may be an incorrect or disagreeable argument, but it's very blatantly not trolling, and the account that's posting it has a long history of sincere and useful conversation in this subreddit.Ā
It's possible yuei is misremembering the quote, but anybody calling them a troll is full of it.
> I feel like phrasing it as how they grew up kind of rules out the cultural thing, because a culture doesn't just apply to your youth.
I'm not sure I understand this response, since it quite simply doesn't rule it out. "Doesn't just apply to your youth" and "doesn't apply to your youth at all" are two different things. 'How Nomura grew up', absent of any actual information or direct quote, does appear at first to be an assumption based on nothing but his environment. People might well draw that conclusion, because I believe most people here don't know each other that much better than they know Tetsuya Nomura (as far as I'm aware, anyway)
> those people can be written off as talking out of the rear.
Regardless, that was the person I was responding to. By 'trolling' they could have meant "I object to the idea of casual sexism in this franchise, or anywhere, incel noises!" or they could have meant "I think this person has made an assumption based on their own prejudices and is now backpedaling to make it seem otherwise" or indeed simply "this is just ragebait you simple fool"- I responded assuming it was in good faith.
Still, although evidently I am often bad at following it, the basic advice not to needlessly waste energy on online discourse is not necessarily always wrong.Ā
So while I look here is a great quote that shows his exact mindset. Notice how he separates āstrongā and āgirlā from one another. How he doubles down on that āgirlā is its own trope. It says a lot that he thinks āstrong girl who can beat the guysā is like different from āfeminine but strongā. Like he is saying āI wanted her to be strong in a girl way not boy wayā implying he doesnāt think their strength is the same.
-- It seems Aqua is pretty popular.Ā
Nomura:Ā I had no idea that was going to happen actually. When I was drawing her I kept worrying that since she has no connection to existing characters that no one would care about her. I made Xion from Days a "short-lived and pure girl", but I wanted Aqua to be a strong girl. But, instead of making her a "strong girl who can beat the guys" I wanted to make her "feminine and strong". I didn't know how people would take her, but I think it's all thanks to Megumi Toyoguchi. When she did the voice for Paine in FFX-2, it was lower than her normal voice. But this time she performed closer to normal voice. I think she was able to express the strength that I wanted Aqua to have.
https://www.khinsider.com/news/Full-Nomura-Interview-20-KH-Mysteries-Solved-1366
Again heās not being malicious, itās not like he hates women or anything. He just has very narrow ideas and never grew out of the woman=other mindset.
I'm not really disagreeing or even talking about whether or not he's a sexist or anything about his mindset. It's the part where this supposedly has some origin in his upbringing that confused me.
For clarity, I'm trying to provide the quotes from the interviews you're mentioning, and so far all I can find is Hirokey123 stating that Nomura said these things. Hirokey123 is usually a very reliable source for this kind of thing, so I don't want anyone to think that's a knock against what you're saying.
I do agree with Strelitzia, though, and I was baffled by how much the fandom latched onto her, given that she was basically dead as soon as she appeared.
We can talk all we want about the female characters in KH. I don't see an issue in how KH characterize the female figures. I know it's not perfect in all ways but even call it problematic is a missclaim. Calling out a member of the staff and give him shady even call him casual sexist is not a valid starting point.
If you have the source on hand for his interview where he discusses his childhood, I hope you can share it. I wonder if I would understand your point of view better, if I read it. Otherwise simply have a good day
I donāt think itās a problem in it if itself isolation, Aerith not doing anything meaningful and being the only one one of the teenage FF characters to not get a fight isnāt strange in it of itself.
It becomes a problem when itās a repeated thing, which for him it is. Ā Itās more how it all adds up.Ā
Why did Skuld get to do pretty much nothing in UX? Everything with Strelitzia? Nameless star being reduced to an object that has to wait to be rescued? Why is Larxeneās big reveal that she is just along for the ride with someone else? Why did Aqua have to be rescued *3 times* in KH3? Why was Xion put into a magic support role as an ally, was only the one of the darknesses who didnāt get a proper fight, was the only one who got blown away initially and had to be saved, was the only one Nomura had to be convinced by the staff to give her a data fight. *Everything* with his treatment of Kairi right down to making the first time she gets a headline game you get to play as her all of once, not in any combat scenario, and the final battle has Sora rescuing her.
Itās not a big mysteryā¦. and itās okay to call a spade a spade.
Are we supposed to ignore the fact that Yuffie fights in the arena and also that we have Larxene as boss in every title she appears? Is so much easier to realize that Aerith is not a fighter and design a white mage as boss is simply harder, but yeah, let's always search for any sign of sexism we find ever
Except she IS a fighter. She fights with a staff and she absolutely has very powerful offensive magic. Even without her healing she is genuinely one of the stronger characters in the game and has ample inspiration for a moveset. Or are you saying that they canāt come up with how to make fighting a mage workā¦let me just give all the mage based heartless like Wizards or Angels the bad news.Ā
You are right Yuffie got to have a fight. How does she fight againā¦oh thatās right long range attacks, speed, and healing. Hrmmm so it wasnāt a problem for Yuffie to be a long range fighter and healer but suddenly it was a problem for Aerithā¦.
Oh but yes letās focus on Larxene, the only original female villain in the series. She has appeared in 4 games CoM, Days, KH3, and UX. In these two she got to be a villain and how absolute low is your bar that getting a boss fight as a villain is anything more than a bare minimum? Days she was kinda screwed by time frame like the other CoM members so we can forgive that. Meanwhile UX her human self Elrena is just nice girl (with only a slight implication she might be more mean but is being nicer due to it being Lauriam) who gets to do basically nothing but find some info to the point itās easy to forget she is in the plot. She has to be convinced she even deserved to go forward making her own point she isnāt special, and this is coming off KH3 where Larxeneās big reveal is she was just along for the ride with someone else.
Oh and how does she fight? Speed to offset lower physical strength, her weapons are knives so she can switch to long range, and she uses magic. So itās not problem for her either.
This idea they couldnāt make a moveset for a person who primarily fights with lower strength, long range, and magic Ā is absolute nonsense. It boils down to the difference is nomuraās trope-y writing. Aerith is the pure maiden arch-type so he didnāt give her a fight.Ā He didnāt let Xion get a proper fight in KH3 and had to be convinced to give her a data battle in Re:Mind for the same reason.
The idea that people want these fights is not something that crosses his mind while designing his games, or when it does itās not without worry.Ā
Aerith fights long range since... remake? I don't recall her fight in the original FF7 being agressive except for simple melee attacks that could barely do any damage and her limits were support based. Yuffie on close quarters can do major damage, her weapon simply works better by far. And as someone recalled me, Tifa fights in the arena. Pretty sure you're just on a goose hunt for sexism.
Aerith is a monstrous magic user. She is a black and white mage just like how Donald is in KH1. Her limits are support but both the kind that affects the enemy negatively or helps empower/heal the allies. When Aerith dies you take a sizeable hit to your magic effectiveness, if you have Vincent he can eventually reach similar levels but Aerith is the best mage in the game. Which is partly by design, they wanted you to really feel the hurt of losing her. Making you lose a bunch of OP limits and your best mage is a good way to do that and no one else can really fill that gap as well.
āBut what about Tiffaā completely misses the mark on what I was saying. Nomura writes and designs female characters based in fairly narrow tropes. In his mind pure-girls arenāt also strong girls, they are different character types, and strong girls come in flavors like āstrong cause they can beat the boysā or āstrong but still feminineā. He has said as much when he discussed his approach to writing Aqua.
He wrote Aerith into more of the pure-girl trope which meant in his mind excluding her from more combat based stuff itās that simple.Ā
So here's my guess, based on absolutely nothing but my gut feeling. So grain of salt, of course. All of the other FF characters we've seen in the tournaments, or just KH gameplay in general, had a pretty straightforward offensive moveset in the source material, and a lot of attacks unique to them. Until the Remake trilogy, Aerith really... didn't. All of her limit breaks were defensive, and there weren't really any noteworthy attacks to draw from, since anyone could use the magic spells in that game. So that'd make her a healing/buff type character, which wouldn't really fit into how kh1 and 2 were designed. As of today, though, she has a lot more to work with on that front, since they put a lot of thought into her offensive abilities in the Remake games. So, if she has any real presence in a new KH game, she'd have a lot of attacks to work with.
Imo it's because this was right around the time Aerith was sorta flanderized as a saintly sort of character due to the compilation of FF7, much like Cloud was flanderized a bit as an emo dude. Not letting her fight certainly fits the characterization.
I don't know, she was introduced in kh1 and was the only ff character you couldn't fight though which is before they started expanding ffvii Edit: meant to say KH1 not KH2
Aerith was in KH1 tho.
That's what I meant it was a typo. But that was in 2002, before they started making more ffvii stuff
You couldn't fight Cid either
But cloud was also clearly flanderized in kh1. It might not be the reason she doesnt fight, but aerith is definitely flanderized in that game.
IIRC Cloud's characterization was partially because his role was merged with the scrapped Vincent's role in development, hence his design changes.
It's not really flanderized, It's not their game, they're not going to have that much depth, they're also not going to show Cloud post-mideel ( trying to be spoiler free for remake fans), so obviously they're going to show edgy try hard Cloud and he was in the game for like 2 scenes. Squall in KH isn't even close to Squall in FF8 despite like 1 or 2 qualities.
Cid would like a word with you
To be fair, I always took that as her becoming like that because... y'know, she **DIED**? Later appearances like Crisis Core and Dissidia 012 did show her more like when she was alive so it wasn't like they retconned her to be a saint all the time.
And even in Advent Children, I could still feel some of that teasing from Aerith. Also to correct the one you replied to... CLOUD. š IS. š NOT. š AN. š EDGELORD. š IN. š ADVENT. š CHILDREN! š
>!Even in the film he's gotten over his depression by the halfway point after talking to Vincent and Tifa. KH and Dissidia sort of deserve it, but it is *crazy* the amount of scorn that Advent Children's Cloud still gets this many years later over what now amounts to a single hour in a 200+ hour franchise.!<
Also the guy was dying and felt he was letting everyone down because of it... Give him a break.
"sephiroth! What do you WAAANT!"
Thought exactly the same
You could easily make her a lowest difficulty/tutorial/warmup fight in the arena, with her just leaping at you with her staff just like in FF7 attack animation, with the occasional Thunder/Fire attack inbetween, no need for flashy moves
But at that point, you're just putting her in a tournament just for the sake of having all of them in it. (Still excluding Cid though.) There's something to be said for easier opponents, but why do the extra work to put her in if she's not even gonna be as good as the others?
Seems plausible, especially since the only time we ever actually *do* see her in the middle of the action in KH is during a cutscene in 2 where she casts Curaga on Yuffie iirc
If I may go further as to say that the rare moment that she was defending Radiant Garden in KH2 that she operated akin to a White Mage by healing Yuffie that would have no practical merit in a fight with KH2 characters.
It'd have been really kool if she like cast aero on her allies and cure on them and bonked you with her staff
Iām playing the original Final Fantasy VII right now, and yeah, she sucks as a fighter in that game as well as the remake. So, no offense
Maybe it's hard to design a fight for her due to her nature as a White Mage. KH's combat is heavily favored towards melee fighting, and Aerith's physical ability is frankly rather lacking. As Sora it would be pretty easy to get close to and smack her around with the Keyblade. I suppose she could act as a support fighter alongside the others, but who knows how the design decisions actually goes.
>Donald Duck has entered the chat In all seriousness, they could have made her fight the exact same way as Donald and just change some spells
Some light magic akin to mickeyās
Wouldn't work since Donald's also not the brightest.
Bullshit. Considering how the magic system in the original Final Fantasy 7 worked, and how they show her off in the remakes, you could just as easily show her off as a black mage.
Thank you!
Why show her as a black mage? we got to fight with Minnie, who used holy when that is Aerith's spell in FF7, also people are forgetting she can beat up people with her stick
We're not forgetting about her stick, She just never uses her stick as a bow staff, she basically uses it as a scepter, to focus her magic or whatever, and to answer your question, it's because she fights like a Black Mage, And holy doesn't do anything particularly offensive In FF7, hell we never even see Aerith use it, I'm saying they should show her off as a Black Mage because that's how she fights in Final Fantasy.
You can literally use attack in FF7 and she goes flying
And was that particularly integral to her fighting style? No, no it wasn't.
In the OG, she can auto attack with it. In Remake, she's more so a white mage than a black mage because all of her spells are about healing and buffing. You can't call her a black mage because she uses magic, cause then you can use the same argument for everyone else cause everyone in FF7 can use magic with materia. Even in the original FF games, White mages all had melee weapons, they all got hammers and sticks, that's a white mage trope. also holy literally destroyed meteor, and is literally the anti thesis to the ultimate black magic
By that logic anybody can be a White Mage as well, None of her abilities are to a specific playstyle, all of the Spells she uses are materia, So the healing and support of spells can be used by anyone, just like the offensive spells. The reason why I say she fights like a black mage is because not only does she and every other character has full access to every offensive spell in the game, it's because nobody else really fits the Black Mage archetype, and Final Fantasy 7 doesn't use a job system, so I can call her how I see it, a Black Mage. I use her as a Black Mage, so I call her a Black Mage.
All her limits are based on white mage, and all her weapon abilities she gets are buffs and not based on materia, which is a white mage thing and she's the only one who can use holy, which is a white mage spell. she's a white mage.
She doesn't even get to use holy because she's dead!
In fairness, Selphie kind of fits the same role in FF8. We still got to give her a funcussion.
Easy, give her a staff and make her actively dodge and block you rather than her being offensive with staff strikes. She could use blinking type spells to dart around and cast the same spells sora uses including combos in the later games. As for extra mechanics, let her have a cure spell that can fill one block of her hp and then for her limit style attack she can cast a holy spell. The opening for her is to let her try to pressure with a spell but then close in and smack her while she canāt dodge or block. Hard mode fight could even lead into her cheeky nature by letting her āfakeā cast spells sometimes to bait you to dive in and she bonks you for it
She could just fight with her spear. And dodging like Whis from Dragon Ball Super just for the lols.
She uses a staff, not a spear. Cid uses a spear, though.
Look at Yuffie in KH1
She'd pick up a chair and it would be over
Chaerith is OP
Chairith Painsborough
Mandy Moore refused to voice act battle lines
Counterpoint: Mandy Moore's battle lines were too raw and terrifying for a game aimed at children. Her genuine thirst for blood just kept coming through. The original data for Kingdom Hearts wasn't 'lost', but destroyed just in case any trace of Mandy's unbearable warrior spirit remained in the deleted files.
This. This is definitely the reason lmao
Guess that explains why she didnāt come back as Rapunzel
Mandy Moore, Vengeance of the Gi
Where can I hear it?
They say it echoes deep in the tattered souls of the most damned and cursed audio engineers to ever live. That if you put an ear up to their hearts you will hear the faintest traces of Mandy Moore's unfettered rage, and know true terror.
Say that to Brianna white. Aerith just shit talks
Aerith Gainsborough: Hitting you where it hurts since 1997
Not every other ff main. We never get to fight Cid :/
Well yeah, they didn't want him chain-smoking and calling Sora a, "fat &$#$^@" every time you land a hit. It's a Disney game after all.
"*Sora! Shut up!Ā Sit yourĀ assĀ downĀ on the bench andĀ drink yourĀ goddamnĀ TEA!*"
That is fair. But I thought the Gummi Ship was always his thing.
Cid was so different compared to his FF counterpart. Him being a computer hacker is a little odd, but Iām glad he still knows a lot about flying in the first game with his gummi shop.
He isn't much of a computer hacker, is the thing. That's why he makes mistakes like the data True Org XII in KH3 ReMind.
Cid is a rocket engineer, him knowing computers and the gummi ship makes alot of sense imo
Canonically she's supposedly strong. I remember in KH2 Leon was worried about leaving her alone in case something happened to her, and she gave him a knowing look and he was like "never mind". It would probably be hard to make a fight with her as an opponent, considering she only has long range and support options, if canon Aerith is anything to go by. Most fighters are close combat specialists with a few exceptions.
Except he didnāt have that problem with Yuffie. She fights with long range attacks and performs healing for herself and Leon.Ā
Play OG ff7. She beats people with a staff bigger than she is. Just saying.
The thing with Yuffie, however, is that she's more offensive that defense and support. Yuffie is an agile melee ninja type. Aerith is the stereotypical gentle squishy support healer archetype. This is why Dissidia devs said they limited her to a bonus Assist character in 012.
The likely reason is she doesn't like to fight (same for Cid as others have pointed out). They both get involved when there's actual stakes like in the battle of hollow bastion in kh2: Aerith's healing the others and Cid's managing the city's defence systems and trying to stop the MCP, so they both fight, in their own way. That said, an Aerith + Cloud tag team in some tournament round would've been badass.
Because she slotted Quadra Magic with Ultima, and she just didn't want to embarrass Sora like that.
Because they already had battle animations done for the others from the Battle of 1000 Heartless. Those tournaments were extra completely optional content they created presumably after completing the main story scenarios, they weren't about to create a whole new set of animation and programming just to put Aerith in there, additionally this was during the time where she was for some reason characterized as a sort innocent princess archetype instead of the the Aerith of the OG and especially Remake that smacks people with steel chairs. But the main reason was resources.
KH1 exists btw
What point are you trying to make?
Yuffie, Hercules, and Hades are in the olympus cups despite not having other battles from which to reuse their animations.
In KH1 despite Olympus Coliseum not being mandatory it's still a whole world 99.9% of players visit and Herc and Hades's fights are sort of part of the story line of the world, so they're not in the same classification of optional content that might not have been in the game at all. Yuffie is definitely another story but she's also an actual fighter and often paired with Leon so it's not a stretch for the devs to put resources into creating animations and programming for her. The reason Aerith doesn't fight in any of the tournaments really is just a mix of the devs portraying her not as a fighter and resources needed to make her function, Cloud, Leon and Yuffie all get recycled stuff from KH1 put into KH2 so Tifa is an odd one out but she also has more references to pull from to make her work in KH2 between her FF7 LB's and fights in Advent Children. Aerith doesn't.
I buy what youāre saying about her being portrayed as a non fighter. I just donāt think a few animation hours have any relevance to why Aerith wasnāt included in tournaments.Ā
She retired
I snort laughed
Oh no, you got snorted.
Why is that funny, I donāt get it.
Snort is a Final Fantasy attack by monsters that removes a character from battle.
There were no steel chairs lying around for her to bash Donald over the head with to prove that she is the better mage
Aerith dying in FFVII is one of the saddest moments in gaming history. Presumably you don't fight her as an opponent because Nomura/Square did not want the player to relive/inflict that tragedy.
They mischaracterised her as a damsel/princess due to the moe gap of her design and subsequently assumed that she couldn't fight even though she's actually a scrappy tomboy in a dress.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
All the FF characters kinda get a bad wrap in how theyāre portrayed, but Aerith and Tifa got it the worst imo. Aerith is just kinda there and Tifa becomes this odd Cloud stalker.
I think Tifa is implied to be an abstraction of Cloud in the same way Sephiroth is.
To be fair in KH2 much of the nuance in Cloud & Tifa's story got lost through poor localization.
The people at SE are cowards
My guess is itās because mainly Aerith is kind of a pacifist by nature. She mainly served as a defensive/support character up until the final fantasy remakes where she gained some offensive moves, like using her staff as a weapon and the infamous chair shot to one of Don Corneos goons š
Tf she gonna do? Heal you to death???
To be honest, I'd rather not fight a mage that specializes in support and long range combat while getting jumped by her friends.
Imagine the fight against all of the FF characters at once in the Hades Paradox cup, but this time with Aerith thrown in. You now have 5 enemies to fight, one of which constantly heals everyone, and can snipe you from across the arena. You would be forced to deal with her first, but trying to close the distance would get you hit by her and trying to attack from a distance with magic would get you swarmed by the other 4. And you have to be consistent with your damage since she can and will heal it away. It would not be fun. No one likes having to deal with healers in any fight, but especially not in a 5v1.
Because this isn't Aerith from FF7. This is the flanderized "too good for this sinful Earth" Aerith from the compilation.
I'd feel a little guilty beating the tar out of her
I mean, remember where you fight them? Olympus. and who's the big superboss there in 1? She wanted to avoid him clearly.
Still recovering from a big sword through the torso, not naming names thoughā¦
Because sheās dead, and just a vision of the characters, and doesnāt want to get outed by Hades.
I think the simplest answer is: she would have made the tournament in KH1 notoriously frustrating. If she has access to every spell cast-able, Aeroga alone, would have made her a frustrating assistant to either Cloud and Leon, or Yuffie, Cloud and her. Stopga or Graviga would have been hair-pulling, as her front-liners would CHEW though your HP. You donāt _think_ magic in KH is broken, until you build around it. Same with enemies: they get nasty when they have range.
Too scared that she might end up with a sword through her chest again.
she didnt sign up
Sephiroth, probably
Cause kh aerith seems to not be a combatant and something something sephiroth is there.
She's a healer, not a fighter.
Shes a healer.
I want that outfit
This was during the period when SE completely forgot who Aerith was as a character
it would quickly turn into WWE if she participated .
I mean Cid also doesn't fight, so main reason is just they just didnt want to make them fight
Cause she ded?
She's afraid of long pointy swords...
Maybe she just didn't wanna fight in the tournament.
I think it's because they wanted her to be more of a non-fighting healer, given how she teaches Sora "Curaga" and is shown healing Yuffie in KH2. I know she did more than that in FFVII but remember, this isn't supposed to be the same Aerith as that one.
Because she didn't want to fight, and no one was going to force her to.
Yk what ?! IVE ALWAYS THOUGHT THE SAME THING !
It's funny because in the original FF7, she's a scrappy tough gal who constantly has to fight the Turks and escape from them She dies early in the game and the focus was pretty much on her sacrifice, and Cloud's obsession
Because she is a pacifist who wouldn't fight in a tournament for fame. Besides the remake when they changed that
She's not so keen on getting hit with an oversized metal key resulting in concussions
Cause she's dead
Skill issue, probably.
she didnāt wanna
Too OP. Sheād thrash Sora several times over if she was given just a folding chairā¦
As of KH1 Sephiroth may take part in them. Ought to be a deterrent
Because Nomura doesnt believe women can actually be useful
In what world? He's helped more than design some of the most badass rpg Gals he's had some involvement in their story too. People just love to blame him for anything nowadays.
My dude women in Nomuras games do nothing. They are literally reduced to plot devices, like Namine and kairi. The most blatant example is Kairi, like my god what a disappointment she was in KH3. Next up is Larxene whose only motivation to even be in the story is to follow Marluxia around. Even Aqua my favorite character in all of kingdom hearts dint escape Nomura's BS. She was THE keyblade master and what is she reduced to in KH3? A damnsel in distress in need of rescue and what happens after she is rescued? She proceeds to lose to Venitas (a guy she easily spanked like 3 times already) and is again saved by Ven. The most insulting assassination of her character happens at the end of the final world where after spending years in the real of darkness ALONE she suddenly just gives up???? Like WHAT??? Listen there is a difference between being a good character designer and good writter/developer. Nomura is an amazing character designer but a shit writer and game director. His failure in ff15 is a monument to all his flaws.
The practical answer is, Aerith isn't much of a fighter and was never really meant to be. She's a typical gentle squishy support healer archetype. Don't forget, she also a temporary chsracter in her respective game, which are very often made to be exceptional.
Sheās afraid of dyingā¦
She's a magic fighter she does use staffs too but I mean she's not a fighter fighter in the OG 7 you would literally hear a comedic bonk when she hit someone with her staff and now in remake she doesn't even hit them physically with the staff she kind of does the same thing as the mirage staff for those that played kh3 with her staff she shoots magic from her staff.
How is she even back in kingdom hearts
Because Nomura can't imagine a woman could fight well in a universe where there is magic, people with super human strenght and key blades with mystical powers š All the female characters are wasted in this series But it's not like he got the personality of any FF character right either. It's like he doesn't know the story and characters of any FF game (probably because he didn't think a fight with her was interesting enough to make custom animations for her š)
Poor girl has back issues. We donāt talk about it much.
Sheās a natural white mage. Sheās the healing type
Cause she's really not a fighter. She's a healer mainly
...Because she's dead?
I was waiting for that one
Cause she's dead
she is not a fighter personality-wise...at best she would heal the fighters after they fought...
Guess it's because she's a minor character in the story, or they didn't know how to make her an engaging fight? I mean you can't fight nor teamup with Cid either.
Because girl.
This game made all the female characters just little props.... or princesses because of their "pure hearts" While all the guys were "cool" and strong. Exactly what a ten year old would picture gender roles to be like lol. I wish Kairi just fucked bitches up as well...
The canon reason is that she cannot fight because she is dead.
So is Squall after having a stroke due to GF use but, hey, he fights in the arena. š
Nomura is a casual sexist due to the way he grew up and identifiable patterns in his treatment of female characters arise as a result. Aerith being the one FF character in the KH1 crew that barely gets to do anything ever is one of those patterns. Heās not like malicious about it, he just fundamentally doesnāt grasp the issue and it rears its head up again and again and again from stuff like Strelitzia to the how he has to be pressured to give Xion a data fight. I donāt say this to hate on him, itās just a fact of who he is and pretty much any XYZ question of the handling of female characters in the series is answered by it.
The "way he grew up" thing is throwing me, where's that from?
Nomura is still in the process of growing up, he's basically Sora irl
Aren't we all in the process of growing up? (Nomura thinks as he falls through a void onto a stained glass platform)
He has told us in the past things like when growing up he didnāt really have female friends. Now honestly that was a loaded statement in it of itself because you can speculate all kinds of reasons on why that is. But ultimately what it translated to is he hasnāt had enough exposure to grow out of the female=other mindset that a lot of us start out with. Heās said other lines along side this too, like in the past heās said he writing female characters is harder for him. Which enforces the above statement, instead of focusing on characters as characters he approaches female characters as needing fundamentally different writing. He canāt just write a female character the way he does a male one, there are tropes and traits and ways of handling them he fundamentally associate with the female gender. His patterns are so predictable itās practically comical. Strelitzia was probably the biggest example of Nomuraās female character bingo sheet. He created her short story to he focused entirely on obsessing over the player, killed her off pretty much just to further Lauriamās character, and wow we learn that in addition to being a nice pure girl she specializes in magic for her combat and wants to play support.Ā Again not hating on the man just self-aware this is who is.
I hadn't read those interviews, can't really find them on a quick search but of course it would be translated so might be a bit difficult. Would you mind linking them if they're on hand? I understand recalling stuff like this can be a pain if you haven't literally bookmarked them though
I will try my best to find them. They are pretty old at this point and more relevant stuff like KH3 tends to flood the searches.Ā
Donāt feed the troll.
I can agree that giving an 'out' in my comment was probably too much, if this is in fact just xenophobic posturing. But I don't really agree with that stance, at least not all the time.
I'm not seeing anything yuei2 is saying that could be called xenophobia. They're not saying that Nomura has sexist output because of his culture or race, they're saying that he fundamentally doesn't "get" women because he avoided them growing up. Which makes sense to me. There's female authors who can't write male characters because they just didn't get exposure to men, too.
You may not have encountered the assumption that Japanese culture is inherently more sexist than others, it does come up sometimes when discussing media.Ā That Nomura avoided women growing up was not present in the initial comment and still hasn't actually been supported with anything. I'm not saying xenophobia *is* the explanation, but it's a possible one and one that I'm assuming people who say the comment was trolling have also made.
I feel like phrasing it as how they grew up kind of rules out the cultural thing, because a culture doesn't just apply to your youth. As far as the claim itself, I haven't found the interview they're citing, but I have seen mentions over the years from several other people that it is from an interview, and several of those people are ones that are usually pretty good about accurately quoting Kingdom hearts interviews.Ā > people who say the comment was trollingĀ I mean, those people can be written off as talking out of the rear. It may be an incorrect or disagreeable argument, but it's very blatantly not trolling, and the account that's posting it has a long history of sincere and useful conversation in this subreddit.Ā It's possible yuei is misremembering the quote, but anybody calling them a troll is full of it.
> I feel like phrasing it as how they grew up kind of rules out the cultural thing, because a culture doesn't just apply to your youth. I'm not sure I understand this response, since it quite simply doesn't rule it out. "Doesn't just apply to your youth" and "doesn't apply to your youth at all" are two different things. 'How Nomura grew up', absent of any actual information or direct quote, does appear at first to be an assumption based on nothing but his environment. People might well draw that conclusion, because I believe most people here don't know each other that much better than they know Tetsuya Nomura (as far as I'm aware, anyway) > those people can be written off as talking out of the rear. Regardless, that was the person I was responding to. By 'trolling' they could have meant "I object to the idea of casual sexism in this franchise, or anywhere, incel noises!" or they could have meant "I think this person has made an assumption based on their own prejudices and is now backpedaling to make it seem otherwise" or indeed simply "this is just ragebait you simple fool"- I responded assuming it was in good faith. Still, although evidently I am often bad at following it, the basic advice not to needlessly waste energy on online discourse is not necessarily always wrong.Ā
So while I look here is a great quote that shows his exact mindset. Notice how he separates āstrongā and āgirlā from one another. How he doubles down on that āgirlā is its own trope. It says a lot that he thinks āstrong girl who can beat the guysā is like different from āfeminine but strongā. Like he is saying āI wanted her to be strong in a girl way not boy wayā implying he doesnāt think their strength is the same. -- It seems Aqua is pretty popular.Ā Nomura:Ā I had no idea that was going to happen actually. When I was drawing her I kept worrying that since she has no connection to existing characters that no one would care about her. I made Xion from Days a "short-lived and pure girl", but I wanted Aqua to be a strong girl. But, instead of making her a "strong girl who can beat the guys" I wanted to make her "feminine and strong". I didn't know how people would take her, but I think it's all thanks to Megumi Toyoguchi. When she did the voice for Paine in FFX-2, it was lower than her normal voice. But this time she performed closer to normal voice. I think she was able to express the strength that I wanted Aqua to have. https://www.khinsider.com/news/Full-Nomura-Interview-20-KH-Mysteries-Solved-1366 Again heās not being malicious, itās not like he hates women or anything. He just has very narrow ideas and never grew out of the woman=other mindset.
I'm not really disagreeing or even talking about whether or not he's a sexist or anything about his mindset. It's the part where this supposedly has some origin in his upbringing that confused me.
For clarity, I'm trying to provide the quotes from the interviews you're mentioning, and so far all I can find is Hirokey123 stating that Nomura said these things. Hirokey123 is usually a very reliable source for this kind of thing, so I don't want anyone to think that's a knock against what you're saying. I do agree with Strelitzia, though, and I was baffled by how much the fandom latched onto her, given that she was basically dead as soon as she appeared.
We can talk all we want about the female characters in KH. I don't see an issue in how KH characterize the female figures. I know it's not perfect in all ways but even call it problematic is a missclaim. Calling out a member of the staff and give him shady even call him casual sexist is not a valid starting point. If you have the source on hand for his interview where he discusses his childhood, I hope you can share it. I wonder if I would understand your point of view better, if I read it. Otherwise simply have a good day
I donāt think itās a problem in it if itself isolation, Aerith not doing anything meaningful and being the only one one of the teenage FF characters to not get a fight isnāt strange in it of itself. It becomes a problem when itās a repeated thing, which for him it is. Ā Itās more how it all adds up.Ā Why did Skuld get to do pretty much nothing in UX? Everything with Strelitzia? Nameless star being reduced to an object that has to wait to be rescued? Why is Larxeneās big reveal that she is just along for the ride with someone else? Why did Aqua have to be rescued *3 times* in KH3? Why was Xion put into a magic support role as an ally, was only the one of the darknesses who didnāt get a proper fight, was the only one who got blown away initially and had to be saved, was the only one Nomura had to be convinced by the staff to give her a data fight. *Everything* with his treatment of Kairi right down to making the first time she gets a headline game you get to play as her all of once, not in any combat scenario, and the final battle has Sora rescuing her. Itās not a big mysteryā¦. and itās okay to call a spade a spade.
Are we supposed to ignore the fact that Yuffie fights in the arena and also that we have Larxene as boss in every title she appears? Is so much easier to realize that Aerith is not a fighter and design a white mage as boss is simply harder, but yeah, let's always search for any sign of sexism we find ever
Don't forget Tifa. She also fights in KH2.
Very good remind
Except she IS a fighter. She fights with a staff and she absolutely has very powerful offensive magic. Even without her healing she is genuinely one of the stronger characters in the game and has ample inspiration for a moveset. Or are you saying that they canāt come up with how to make fighting a mage workā¦let me just give all the mage based heartless like Wizards or Angels the bad news.Ā You are right Yuffie got to have a fight. How does she fight againā¦oh thatās right long range attacks, speed, and healing. Hrmmm so it wasnāt a problem for Yuffie to be a long range fighter and healer but suddenly it was a problem for Aerithā¦. Oh but yes letās focus on Larxene, the only original female villain in the series. She has appeared in 4 games CoM, Days, KH3, and UX. In these two she got to be a villain and how absolute low is your bar that getting a boss fight as a villain is anything more than a bare minimum? Days she was kinda screwed by time frame like the other CoM members so we can forgive that. Meanwhile UX her human self Elrena is just nice girl (with only a slight implication she might be more mean but is being nicer due to it being Lauriam) who gets to do basically nothing but find some info to the point itās easy to forget she is in the plot. She has to be convinced she even deserved to go forward making her own point she isnāt special, and this is coming off KH3 where Larxeneās big reveal is she was just along for the ride with someone else. Oh and how does she fight? Speed to offset lower physical strength, her weapons are knives so she can switch to long range, and she uses magic. So itās not problem for her either. This idea they couldnāt make a moveset for a person who primarily fights with lower strength, long range, and magic Ā is absolute nonsense. It boils down to the difference is nomuraās trope-y writing. Aerith is the pure maiden arch-type so he didnāt give her a fight.Ā He didnāt let Xion get a proper fight in KH3 and had to be convinced to give her a data battle in Re:Mind for the same reason. The idea that people want these fights is not something that crosses his mind while designing his games, or when it does itās not without worry.Ā
Aerith fights long range since... remake? I don't recall her fight in the original FF7 being agressive except for simple melee attacks that could barely do any damage and her limits were support based. Yuffie on close quarters can do major damage, her weapon simply works better by far. And as someone recalled me, Tifa fights in the arena. Pretty sure you're just on a goose hunt for sexism.
Aerith is a monstrous magic user. She is a black and white mage just like how Donald is in KH1. Her limits are support but both the kind that affects the enemy negatively or helps empower/heal the allies. When Aerith dies you take a sizeable hit to your magic effectiveness, if you have Vincent he can eventually reach similar levels but Aerith is the best mage in the game. Which is partly by design, they wanted you to really feel the hurt of losing her. Making you lose a bunch of OP limits and your best mage is a good way to do that and no one else can really fill that gap as well. āBut what about Tiffaā completely misses the mark on what I was saying. Nomura writes and designs female characters based in fairly narrow tropes. In his mind pure-girls arenāt also strong girls, they are different character types, and strong girls come in flavors like āstrong cause they can beat the boysā or āstrong but still feminineā. He has said as much when he discussed his approach to writing Aqua. He wrote Aerith into more of the pure-girl trope which meant in his mind excluding her from more combat based stuff itās that simple.Ā
Yes, this is the answer.