Review of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

Firstly I’d like to make the point that I watched the recap feature on the DVD and thus that may have influenced my opinions. However it made very little, if any, sense to me, so I don’t think it would have had an impact. I was nicely surprised by this anime. Final Fantasy is a fandom I always heard about and always thought I should watch but never had the reasoning or felt the want to. I wasn’t expecting much from this film so what I got was a pleasant surprise. The graphics on this were lovely, having watched it after watching Appleseed (2004) I’m not surewhich is better but both rock. The thing that threw me most was the body language, there was a lot of it and I really liked it.

The characters themselves could have been more developed but I understand that they have several films of back story and in a movie based on the games you are expected to a certain point to know that back story. They worked well as they were for me without the back story, I could figure things out and piece them together.

The plot ran a little thin and was hard to understand without the aid of a Final Fantasy otaku like jazzymegster by your side. But it was pretty; there were kick arse fights and good music which is always good in anime.

Downsides for me? And this will show you all how shallow I am. There was no character I fell in love with, none that made me shout ‘oh mamma I want a piece of him/her!’ Tifa was interesting, the red haired dude looked cool but that was about it.

It has sparked my interest in the Final Fantasy universe, so if anyone knows of a way for me to find out more without having to play the games give me a bell.

Overall good anime, worth the watch and worth recommending to even Final Fantasy newbies.

Nanashi Moriko *potentially a Final Fantasy fangirl but not an Advent Children one*
18/06/07