Happy Mother's Day: Jenova

The one the Professor mistook for a Cetra . . . was named Jenova. That is the "calamity from the sky." We are all nothing more than Jenova's puppets.

Sephiroth says it best when he explains: "The Jenova Project wanted to produce people with the powers of the Ancients . . . no, the Cetra. . . . I am the one that was produced." An itinerant alien creature found sealed in a "2000 year old geological stratum," apparently dead: Jenova. A psychotic scientific experiment injects Jenova's cells into the unborn child Sephiroth. Is Jenova his mother? Sephiroth seems to think so, noting that "With her superior power, knowledge, and magic, Mother was destined to become the ruler of the Planet." But Sephiroth isn't alone. Without realizing it, the cast of Final Fantasy VII and many of the various people and creatures that they meet are being drawn to the Knowlespole (i.e., the Northern Crater), for Jenova's Reunion. Although they believe they are willfully hunting down Sephiroth, the truth is that the alien Jenova cells within Cloud---as well as those within the many black-cloaked figures they encounter---are being inexorably drawn toward Sephiroth's body---the largest concentration of Jenova cells---to reform the creature Jenova.

Throughout the game, whenever the player's party fights Sephiroth, Jenova appears to battle immediately afterward. Later on, as the plot unfolds, it becomes apparent that Sephiroth has been ensconced in the Lifestream, frozen deep within the Northern Crater, the whole time. What you've been fighting are pieces of Jenova under Sephiroth's control impersonating Sephiroth (as Sephiroth says, "The ability to change one's looks, voice, and words, is the power of Jenova"). The fascinating aspect of this Madonna-and-child dynamic is their reciprocal symbiosis: Jenova's cells exist and act from within her son and host, Sephiroth; meanwhile, Sephiroth---frozen and incapacitated beneath the Knowlespole---can only exert his influence in the world by controlling the Jenova cells in others. Although Sephiroth emerges as the primary antagonist of Final Fantasy VII, all of his actions are designed to promote Jenova's agenda: to effect the "Reunion" that will allow her cells to reform, and then to take back the planet in her name.

In the final event of Final Fantasy VII, the Sephiroth > Jenova pattern is reversed: As any mother would do (and, we realize toward the end of the game, as she has done all along), she comes between the player's party and her son, Sephiroth. Only when she has finally been defeated can you battle the real Sephiroth at last and end the game.

In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, the characters Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz are introduced as children of Jenova, striving to complete the Jenova Reunion that was foiled during the events Final Fantasy VII. In Advent Children, the trio places a special emphasis upon Jenova as the "mother" of any creature that is infected with her cells (including all of the children experiencing the Geostigma illness). Kadaj and company, oddly enough, don't carry any Jenova cells within themselves, which is why they are so desparate to find the missing head of Jenova (remember that Sephiroth carried it off during the Nibelheim event in FFVII) so that they can infect themselves with her cells and join in the Reunion.