Many waifus have come and gone in the Final Fantasy series. Surprisingly, a lot of them are somewhat problematic in some way, at least in a dating sense. Don’t fall in love with Yuna because she’s about to die, Terra has some deep-rooted abandonment and identity issues, the list goes on.
But none of them even come close to the poster child of Final Fantasy VII: the flower girl herself, Aerith Gainsborough. Look, it’s time to finally address the elephant in the room. We all love Aerith. She’s charming and sweet, but let’s not kid ourselves. If anyone went on a date with her in real life, we’d be running away so quickly.
It’s no secret that Aerith’s always had her one great love before she ever met Cloud. Crisis Core makes that abundantly clear: Aerith and Zack are a thing. They had their whole meet-cute, they flirted, she wrote letters to him when he went missing, he died before he could go back to her, tears were shed. If this doesn’t scream One True Pairing (TM), I don’t know what does.
Then, enter Cloud, who meets her for the first time in Final Fantasy VII. Aerith’s still very adorable and charming, and they have lots of cute moments together. FFVII Remake, in particular, was especially good at building up the rapport between these two characters. They share a lovely, lighthearted conversation as they make their way across the rooftops after escaping the church. Cloud says he needs to get back to the Sector 7 slums. Aerith asks if he knows his way back. He says yes. Aerith says in a slight singsong voice, “Sure you do.”
It’s a very cute sequence where she’s constantly joking and teasing him as she tries to poke through Cloud’s tough exterior. Eventually he starts teasing her back as well. All this time, you’ve got the very beautiful Aerith’s Theme playing in the background and everything is idyllic. If this were a romcom, they’d be the endgame couple for sure.
And then, bit by bit, the warning signs start popping up. All of a sudden, Aerith’s talking about how she used to know a SOLDIER guy named Zack, just like Cloud. Lemme just say if I were Cloud I’d be all like, “Zack? Where did Zack come from?” She doesn’t quite confirm that they were a thing, but if you’re paying attention, you’d certainly think that her hesitating was pretty sus.
In Rebirth, all becomes clear. Aerith’s previous relationship with Zack finally comes to light, and we learn that he died before the events of Remake. It gets worse. If you manage to secure Aerith as your Gold Saucer date later on, she spends a whole portion of time talking about Zack and how Cloud reminded her so much of him when they first met. Look. Girl talks about her ex while you’re on a date? Red flag. Girl talks about how you’re just like her ex in almost every conceivable way? HUGE RED FLAG.
This seems like a good time to segue into a bit of a personal story of mine. I have a friend who once went on a date with a girl. Everything was going swimmingly until the girl asked, “Hey, do you wanna know how my ex and I broke up? It’s a juicy story.” My friend said, yeah why not, and what ensued was an hour-long storytelling session where the girl just went on about the breakup, followed by gossip about what the ex was up to now. Needless to say, my friend cut her losses pretty quickly after that. Major Aerith vibes.
Any normal human being would be running for the hills in that situation, but because this is a JRPG, it’s easy to wave those concerns away and just go with the flow. Of course, the circumstances are a little different here. Aerith and Zack didn’t break up, he died. That being said, anyone in Cloud’s position would almost certainly view that as a big warning sign that, hey, maybe this girl isn’t quite ready for a new relationship just yet. Especially if she was telling me that I reminded her a lot of her dead ex that she clearly still has feelings for.
I’m not sure any other major female character in the Final Fantasy series has ever displayed any red flags like that. Maybe Rinoa, who was totally just using her dance with Squall to kill time at the ball while waiting for her real king Seifer to show up. But even in that game, she got over Seifer pretty quickly on account of him being a huge jerk. Zack Fair, on the flipside, was basically flawless. How could you ever compete with that?
Which is why, as much as it hurts me to say as a non-Tifa fan, it’s clear that Tifa was always meant to be the canonical love interest in FFVII. Aerith might tick all the right boxes as the charming flower girl with a great sense of humor, but that girl’s clearly never getting over Zack, no matter how much she might flirt with Cloud.
Wake up, Cloud! The red flags are right there in your face. That girl is emotionally unavailable, and no, that Gold Saucer date where she kept talking about Zack is not a good sign that things are moving in the right direction.
