I am not as proud of this video as I was of Final Fantasy VI, but I’m not necessarily bothered by that fact. I’ve already expressed the thought, but ideally I’d have the time and ability to replay a game two or three times before I try and craft the script and compile my analysis together. As always, it was during the editing stage that I began to pick up on a lot of little elements I could have expounded upon, whole ideas I had repeated, and character traits and dialogue that I had completely forgotten about. In fact, my interpretation of the character Freya could be quite inaccurate based upon some of the footage I scrubbed through.

Nevertheless, I think the core of the video is still solid. While I could have illustrated the points better, I think the end result would have been the same. Final Fantasy IX has a philosophy about a life well-lived, and I think I do a suitable job exploring this idea.

There are plenty of ideas I failed to touch upon in the video and had to leave on the cutting room floor, and with Final Fantasy VI I had pondered creating a sort of “mini” video that just touched on the separate items one after another. As you well know, such a video never materialized. I think it is best that I focus on whole videos filled with critiques and analyses rather than try and fill the gaps, improving my work flow over adding new complications.

Nevertheless, I truly do wish I had given more time to discuss my distaste of Kuja and why I found him to be an inferior villain to many others in the Final Fantasy franchise. Ideally, everything involving Terra would have been scrapped in favor of Necron being the powerful Eidolon the summoning tribe had attempted to control. With Kuja and the Mist acting as creations of Necron, it would have allowed Kuja to have a far more worthwhile arc in which he seeks to rebel against his creator. Do not give him any relation to Zidane. We do not need Zidane to have a home or anything of the sort. A simple orphan boy is all you need for his character to work, rather than repeating Vivi’s story-arc from a slightly different but still too similar angle. Let Kuja’s revelation be that defeating Necron would mean to kill himself, giving Kuja greater cause to turn against the others. Yes, he’ll likely die anyway, but such is the lack of logic that fear of death and the desperate sense of self-preservation.

Even this would not truly improve the character, however. His greatest flaw is simply his personality. Conceited and verbose, his constant monologuing became a chore to read. I was wondering if I had been unfair to dislike Kuja when I was younger. I now know my feelings weren’t negative enough.

Perhaps I’ll revisit Final Fantasy IX one day, be it in video or written form. I do wish to replay it again at some point. For now, however, I must take a break from role-playing games and Final Fantasy. The next two projects should be far, far closer together. We’ll see what I intend on after them.