Always happy to see people actually talk about the elements of FF8 instead of making the same tired old surface level observations over and over again.
With the amount of content and discourse I've absorbed from the series over the last few decades, it's pretty rare to see someone looking at FFVIII from a lens I haven't seen before. And as a lover of the history of witchcraft and esoteric thought... this kind of analysis is right up my alley. Kudos for really trying to do something different and honestly, nailing it. Excited to keep an eye on this channel moving forward.
Your channel was just recommended to me by TH-cam out of nowhere, and gosh I’m thankful it was, nice to see more FF content creators who dig more into the nuances of the games, and are able to teach us one thing or more about this franchise that even a lot of diehard fans might not know yet
This was the FF game that mapped out a lot of what I started liking from other entertainment. I always loved the opening cinematic and I never knew about the meaning behind symbols. Excellent work with this video for a great game!
I loooved this analysis & perspective! The seifer part really got me, the story behind the cross on his sleeves have some parallels that had me gagged. What I love a lot about Final Fantasy 8 is, though I don't think it was intentional, lends itself to a lot of theory crafting. Aspects of the story and the lore leaves things open to interpretation, arguably more than any other entry in the series. Comparing the in-universe lore of the sorceresses to that of real-life history of witches in society was a fascinating and original viewpoint
Purple in Japan has a further meaning as it's associated with death and poison, and when you consider how Ultimicia's clawed hands look like they've been coated in purple it amplfies her deadly aura further.
Hey, I saw your comment on my video and ended up checking out your channel. Lots of great info and food for thought in here, but really appreciated the humour and writing style. Looking forward to seeing what you cover next. It can be slow going at the start, but keep doing vids of this quality and you'll be flying.
Damn, a good suggestion from the algorithm. 😂 Fantastic video, BTW. Have a sub. 😊 Seifer the second most irksome villian for me in the FF series. I think it's because he doesn't really face any repercussions for his actions. Even his super dedicated friends at least see the error of their ways before the end. Keep up the great work. ❤
I'm researching the Sorceresses in FF8 right now as I'm creating a character in FFXIV inspired by those designs and so stumbled on this video. This was not a video I ever anticipated I'd find interesting but thank you for making it, I love it when we stumble on things we didn't know we wanted.
ff14 player here and can safely say there a lot of good sets that can mimic the ff8 style well lot of good gear sets to be a sorceress. the primal and Aether DC has a lot of voidsent theme players in the RP scene or who just like those types of glams.
First off, great analysis; love this game, and you have good points about artistic design and character presentation. Just want to point out that, @0:30, I haven't heard an Irish woman say "red-headed step-child" before, and it kind of breaks my heart. That's a phrase in America, but I hope English colonial ideas haven't gone so far as to make it truly universal; redheads are cool.
It seems like a sorceress's power dramatically changes her physical appearance, but with Edea's return to her Matron form in the ending FMV, it appears that the process is reversible. So it's funny how at the orphanage after her defeat, Edea's taken off her curtains but kept the dress and headpiece. It makes me wonder if she was temporarily stuck with her witch-like appearance while Ultimecia's influence was leaving her body. Keeping the dress makes sense - there's probably nothing else in her wardrobe that covers her claw-like fingers - but the headpiece? Then again, if I rocked a conch headpiece like Edea, maybe I'd keep it on too 😛
I mean, her gimmick is that she passes her powers without needing to die (she has done it twice at least in her life) so it kinda follows that she would not be as mutated as the other two. She still has weird pupils, golden eyes, unnaturally pale skin and I think the veins are still there after she is a witch no longer so...
Seifer’s Red Cross also makes me think of the Red Cross Knight, from The Faerie Queen - a man who serves a protects a Virtuous Woman, Una, and defies a Duplicitous Woman, Duessa. Seifer could be seen as an inversion of this, defying the Virtuous Woman Rinoa and serving the Duplicitous Woman Edea (who is, as you point out, also a Virtuous Woman).
Ultimecia's last form is very interesting when you think about FF8's witches origins as basically vessels of Hyne, pretty much as if they are just there to enact in one way or another God's punishment on humanity for their greed of power.
Nice take. I believe that some of the designs were done in order to show exactly what you analyse here and some other aspects of your take though they are completely right and on point, I do think that they were made targeting these greater meanings. Despite some things being created more in "random" truth is that people as psychological beings and beings of a shared social psych that tend to create things with deeper meaning than they aim for because of their subconscious. I disagree that Edea when not controlled is still a woman with villainous intent. Again, nice take.
I thought that the design of Matron Edea was so painfully simple and dark and colourless was more to highlight how much her personality was changed by taking on Ultimecia’s will. Like I think they really swerved so hard to the other end of the scale with her design because when we got a good clear look at Edea she was sporting a gold bed frame, adorned with shower curtains, and her head topped off with seashells. Matron, while not really shown in a cutscene until the end of the game (and even then we don’t get a good look at her in any degree of detail) she’s just quite unremarkable. Plain Jane, so to speak. Maybe this was to be as much of a self insert as possible for “place your own mother figure here” like we can name Squall, Rinoa and her Dog, but that’s about as creative as you can get with it. Everyone’s costumes and personalities are well defined. Matron doesn’t have much of a backstory other than being motherly and married to Cid. We’re kinda left to fill in the blanks ourselves. But she’s also standing out as the most unremarkable person in the game as a stark contrast among the overdesigned people in the game. And maybe that’s the point? Cos it’s easier to control the will of a vessel if the vessel had no real will or ambition to begin with… like Rinoa’s easier to take control of when she’d become overly reliant on SeeD for protection, but once she grows a pair and realizes she’s a bad capable bish we never see her getting possessed again. I think Ulti was drawn to Edea because she had the weakest will, and Edea was willing to throw herself in front of the kids to make sure none of them became Ulti’s puppets anyway. Imagine if it was someone like Adel who was all like, oh ho no… you’re gonna give ME your power and this is what we’re gonna do with it! I don’t see Adel going along with Ulti’s plans unless it aligns with something Adel also wants. She doesn’t look like a passenger. That’s what I feel like Matron Edea’s design does: It makes her look like SUCH an NPC she’s a passenger of the plot. A passenger of Ultimecia.
I was a teen in the 90s... and I don't actually think Seifer's costuming is terribly out of place in relation to the other characters. The loner outcast character type sporting a long trench coat has started to become a thing by the late 90s, though the fact that his is white as opposed to black is where his design does start to diverge. Also to that end if any of the contemporary outfits are a bit out of step with the 90s stylings, it would be, in my opinion, Squall, whose fur lined leather jacket would have been something more at home in the late 80s as opposed to the 90s (this is from an American point of view) I can recall seeing him when the game first came out and already thinking that he looked like someone who was behind the times or out of date when it comes to trends in fashion. I'd almost think this fits his character if he were to stick with things that are tried and true rather than chasing after trends.... but he would have been too young (if fashion trends followed the same history in his world) to have gotten the jacket new when it would have been fashionable.
I like to think Ultimecia admired Edea's beauty and saw her as a perfect vessel to recreate her image. And the spokes on her back which symbolize Ulty's dominion over time are a jab against the society of the present bc no one really knows what's going on at that point.
That was awesome! Subbed. What do you make of Sorceress Edea's dress? The bottom is white, maybe foreshadowing her being good or having been corrupted?
I hate some aspects of this game but love others. I dont argue with people that feel this is the best game ever made even though i feel like it's deeply flawed. Tetsuya nomura was definitely at his peak at this point.
I can't help but notice, thanks to this video, that a lot of the Witch designs seem to be inspired by Native American cultural clothes, especially Ultimecia's horns and facepaint. Anyway, good video.
its been ages since I deep dived FF8 stuff but while yes edea gave her powers to rinoa, and first, didn't adel also since rinoa was the closest vessel and isn't that also how they engaged time compression. after defeating adel, who was connected to ultimecia, it moves to rinoa and ellone activates her power to send them to the castle. maybe I'm misremembering though.
I think there's something to be said for the fact that the various connotations associated with colors are not universal. This being a game made by Japanese developers. There's probably a lot to be pulled from that cultural context.
very good point! colour symbolism is def not universal, but because the world of FF8 is based on western europe and the characters are therefore created to reflect a western/european style, I thought it was fair to make it through that lens. But yeah this is only one video from one perspective and I would love to see more FF style videos that came from a non-western interpretation too, that would be equally as valid!
I’ve been DYING for someone to do a video talking about gender representation as it pertains to final fantasy villains. And especially for 8 which is unique in the franchise because I haven’t played FF14-16 so I could be wrong here but I’m pretty sure it’s the only mainline game with an end of game boss who is a woman. Not just a gender non specific entity in the shape of a woman like Cloud of Darkness or a Jenova or tangentially an antagonistic threat near the end of the game like Lady Yunalesca. Granted a similar critique applies to their designs as the witches here- and to the overwhelmingly manscape of the male villains in the series. Just as we can see Adel’s overt power and hypermasculinity on a female form as a way to codify villainy having Kuja be a fancy little lavender haired femboy in a thong and cropped jacket all day (which btw, goals) is doing the exact same thing. Sephiroth is a genius design for having ethereal elements that cancel each other out where he’s somehow very masculine and feminine in design, he seems very old and vibrantly youthful he’s strong but sleek his outfit goes in tight and then flares out and is just black and white. He’s a fascinating gender case study in himself. And we could go on and on with more conventional brutish masculine designs or a kind of agendered chaos of Kefka- but it just scratches something in my brain to hear someone FINALLY dedicate more than a passing comment to it about the sorceresses of final fantasy 8.
The most recent DLC Dawntrail for FFXIV does have a female antagonist, but for the most part there are two male antagonists who act as red herrings. Aside from that, there is a couple of minor antagonists who are female, Tsukuyomi is perhaps the most well realised from the Stormblood DLC. It's a shame really, I feel the FF franchise is well primed to have some great female antagonists so it's surprising that after 16 main titles we've only seen two have major female antagonists and one was from a DLC.
This was really interesting to watch. I always thought Seifer's outfit looked a little out of place compared to others. Would you consider looking at the other character's outfit designs?
This isnt a complaint, but I dont think Adel was necessarily trying to look for a successor even though several characters say this. I think she was rounding up girls to absorb into herself to become more powerful.
If the FF8 historical records are true, situations with more than one sorceress at the same time being active are pretty much unheard of, it could be because most of them hide like Elleone and Edea but I dunno if a witch could give their power to another witch. Adel created an Empire and, knowing she will end up dying sooner or later (she was at war literally with the rest of the planet), it isn't far fetched to think she wanted to groom a girl she could pass her powers into and continue the war.
![The Complete Unabridged Timeline of Final Fantasy VIII [The Legend of Hyne]](/img/n.gif)
Always happy to see people actually talk about the elements of FF8 instead of making the same tired old surface level observations over and over again.
hey thanks so much!
Final fantasy 8 deep dives are always appreciated.
thank you very much!
Almost makes you feel bad for Seifer.
Also, I never noticed the clock in Edea's headpiece. Nice catch!
It's a golden sundial disk if anything.
With the amount of content and discourse I've absorbed from the series over the last few decades, it's pretty rare to see someone looking at FFVIII from a lens I haven't seen before.
And as a lover of the history of witchcraft and esoteric thought... this kind of analysis is right up my alley. Kudos for really trying to do something different and honestly, nailing it. Excited to keep an eye on this channel moving forward.
Edea and Ultimecia are so CVNTY in the best way possible.
Great observations about Seifer and his childhood dream!
Good god, Game Dove. Your analyses are very, very interesting! Thanks for that work!
6:10 bruuuutal 😭😭 great analysis and writing!
Your channel was just recommended to me by TH-cam out of nowhere, and gosh I’m thankful it was, nice to see more FF content creators who dig more into the nuances of the games, and are able to teach us one thing or more about this franchise that even a lot of diehard fans might not know yet
This was the FF game that mapped out a lot of what I started liking from other entertainment. I always loved the opening cinematic and I never knew about the meaning behind symbols. Excellent work with this video for a great game!
Game Dove just became MOTHER Dove!
Guuurrrl you ate 😍
Top notch analysis
oh now this is the kind of stuff i have alllllllll the time in the world for! instant sub and i can not wait to dive into all of this!
thank youuuu i hope you enjoy!!
Especially loved the cifer analysis, never caught on to the knight motif on his coat before. Such a nice design
I loooved this analysis & perspective! The seifer part really got me, the story behind the cross on his sleeves have some parallels that had me gagged.
What I love a lot about Final Fantasy 8 is, though I don't think it was intentional, lends itself to a lot of theory crafting. Aspects of the story and the lore leaves things open to interpretation, arguably more than any other entry in the series. Comparing the in-universe lore of the sorceresses to that of real-life history of witches in society was a fascinating and original viewpoint
Purple in Japan has a further meaning as it's associated with death and poison, and when you consider how Ultimicia's clawed hands look like they've been coated in purple it amplfies her deadly aura further.
This was a good character analysis. I think that Edea is Nomura's best character design. I find it so striking, yet simple.
Hey, I saw your comment on my video and ended up checking out your channel. Lots of great info and food for thought in here, but really appreciated the humour and writing style.
Looking forward to seeing what you cover next. It can be slow going at the start, but keep doing vids of this quality and you'll be flying.
thank you so much, I really appreciate it. You are so kind! I really enjoy watching your videos, so I'm pure thrilled you enjoyed mine! !
Damn, a good suggestion from the algorithm. 😂
Fantastic video, BTW. Have a sub. 😊
Seifer the second most irksome villian for me in the FF series. I think it's because he doesn't really face any repercussions for his actions. Even his super dedicated friends at least see the error of their ways before the end.
Keep up the great work. ❤
I'm researching the Sorceresses in FF8 right now as I'm creating a character in FFXIV inspired by those designs and so stumbled on this video. This was not a video I ever anticipated I'd find interesting but thank you for making it, I love it when we stumble on things we didn't know we wanted.
ff14 player here and can safely say there a lot of good sets that can mimic the ff8 style well lot of good gear sets to be a sorceress. the primal and Aether DC has a lot of voidsent theme players in the RP scene or who just like those types of glams.
Absolutely love this - thanks for your analysis; stupid interesting.
Ultimecia's costume awakened the man in me as an 8 year old in 1998 lol
This channel was needed !!!!
I am happy I got to find your channel. Great video and i owe it to myself to check out your channel. Thank you.
More love for ff8. It was my first and still is close to my heart.
First off, great analysis; love this game, and you have good points about artistic design and character presentation. Just want to point out that, @0:30, I haven't heard an Irish woman say "red-headed step-child" before, and it kind of breaks my heart. That's a phrase in America, but I hope English colonial ideas haven't gone so far as to make it truly universal; redheads are cool.
awesome content, please keep it up! EDIT: congrats on 900 subs :D
It seems like a sorceress's power dramatically changes her physical appearance, but with Edea's return to her Matron form in the ending FMV, it appears that the process is reversible. So it's funny how at the orphanage after her defeat, Edea's taken off her curtains but kept the dress and headpiece. It makes me wonder if she was temporarily stuck with her witch-like appearance while Ultimecia's influence was leaving her body. Keeping the dress makes sense - there's probably nothing else in her wardrobe that covers her claw-like fingers - but the headpiece? Then again, if I rocked a conch headpiece like Edea, maybe I'd keep it on too 😛
I mean, her gimmick is that she passes her powers without needing to die (she has done it twice at least in her life) so it kinda follows that she would not be as mutated as the other two.
She still has weird pupils, golden eyes, unnaturally pale skin and I think the veins are still there after she is a witch no longer so...
Seifer’s Red Cross also makes me think of the Red Cross Knight, from The Faerie Queen - a man who serves a protects a Virtuous Woman, Una, and defies a Duplicitous Woman, Duessa. Seifer could be seen as an inversion of this, defying the Virtuous Woman Rinoa and serving the Duplicitous Woman Edea (who is, as you point out, also a Virtuous Woman).
Ultimecia's last form is very interesting when you think about FF8's witches origins as basically vessels of Hyne, pretty much as if they are just there to enact in one way or another God's punishment on humanity for their greed of power.
Nice take. I believe that some of the designs were done in order to show exactly what you analyse here and some other aspects of your take though they are completely right and on point, I do think that they were made targeting these greater meanings. Despite some things being created more in "random" truth is that people as psychological beings and beings of a shared social psych that tend to create things with deeper meaning than they aim for because of their subconscious. I disagree that Edea when not controlled is still a woman with villainous intent.
Again, nice take.
Thank you, so so so good
I thought that the design of Matron Edea was so painfully simple and dark and colourless was more to highlight how much her personality was changed by taking on Ultimecia’s will.
Like I think they really swerved so hard to the other end of the scale with her design because when we got a good clear look at Edea she was sporting a gold bed frame, adorned with shower curtains, and her head topped off with seashells.
Matron, while not really shown in a cutscene until the end of the game (and even then we don’t get a good look at her in any degree of detail) she’s just quite unremarkable. Plain Jane, so to speak.
Maybe this was to be as much of a self insert as possible for “place your own mother figure here” like we can name Squall, Rinoa and her Dog, but that’s about as creative as you can get with it.
Everyone’s costumes and personalities are well defined.
Matron doesn’t have much of a backstory other than being motherly and married to Cid.
We’re kinda left to fill in the blanks ourselves.
But she’s also standing out as the most unremarkable person in the game as a stark contrast among the overdesigned people in the game.
And maybe that’s the point?
Cos it’s easier to control the will of a vessel if the vessel had no real will or ambition to begin with… like Rinoa’s easier to take control of when she’d become overly reliant on SeeD for protection, but once she grows a pair and realizes she’s a bad capable bish we never see her getting possessed again.
I think Ulti was drawn to Edea because she had the weakest will, and Edea was willing to throw herself in front of the kids to make sure none of them became Ulti’s puppets anyway.
Imagine if it was someone like Adel who was all like, oh ho no… you’re gonna give ME your power and this is what we’re gonna do with it!
I don’t see Adel going along with Ulti’s plans unless it aligns with something Adel also wants.
She doesn’t look like a passenger.
That’s what I feel like Matron Edea’s design does:
It makes her look like SUCH an NPC she’s a passenger of the plot. A passenger of Ultimecia.
FF8 - My first Love 🖤
ADELE is for the EPITOME of "Mad Sorceress" She took possession of the body of the men she were IN LOVE and live by. Crazy.
Very interesting video, thank you ❤
Damn I wasn't mentally prepared for FF8 to project puritan ideas of womanhood 😭
This as an excellent look at FF8. I hadn't seen this game viewed this way.
Well, nice work ❤
I was a teen in the 90s... and I don't actually think Seifer's costuming is terribly out of place in relation to the other characters. The loner outcast character type sporting a long trench coat has started to become a thing by the late 90s, though the fact that his is white as opposed to black is where his design does start to diverge.
Also to that end if any of the contemporary outfits are a bit out of step with the 90s stylings, it would be, in my opinion, Squall, whose fur lined leather jacket would have been something more at home in the late 80s as opposed to the 90s (this is from an American point of view) I can recall seeing him when the game first came out and already thinking that he looked like someone who was behind the times or out of date when it comes to trends in fashion. I'd almost think this fits his character if he were to stick with things that are tried and true rather than chasing after trends.... but he would have been too young (if fashion trends followed the same history in his world) to have gotten the jacket new when it would have been fashionable.
Nice observation. I'm not super fond of the puritan bent, but it's a valid observation.
I think there's more to the time travel fuckery. Consider this. Everything that's Seifer's dream is stuff that Squall had as reality.
I like to think Ultimecia admired Edea's beauty and saw her as a perfect vessel to recreate her image. And the spokes on her back which symbolize Ulty's dominion over time are a jab against the society of the present bc no one really knows what's going on at that point.
Great summary!
That was awesome! Subbed.
What do you make of Sorceress Edea's dress? The bottom is white, maybe foreshadowing her being good or having been corrupted?
I hate some aspects of this game but love others. I dont argue with people that feel this is the best game ever made even though i feel like it's deeply flawed. Tetsuya nomura was definitely at his peak at this point.
Can we have costume design analysis of VII and IX please😻
Yes! More please! This was very well done and super interesting, I’m there for it
I can't help but notice, thanks to this video, that a lot of the Witch designs seem to be inspired by Native American cultural clothes, especially Ultimecia's horns and facepaint. Anyway, good video.
FF Costumes are generally underapreciated, take Lunafreyas Hair and dress, just one example among many...
Love your content. Makes me wanna replay 8 for the 100th time.
Can we get one for FFX too please?
Really enjoyed the video and definitely subscribed!
its been ages since I deep dived FF8 stuff but while yes edea gave her powers to rinoa, and first, didn't adel also since rinoa was the closest vessel and isn't that also how they engaged time compression. after defeating adel, who was connected to ultimecia, it moves to rinoa and ellone activates her power to send them to the castle.
maybe I'm misremembering though.
This wasn't bad, apart from the one mistake you did good. fashion and games being interesting colour me surprised.
I think there's something to be said for the fact that the various connotations associated with colors are not universal.
This being a game made by Japanese developers. There's probably a lot to be pulled from that cultural context.
very good point! colour symbolism is def not universal, but because the world of FF8 is based on western europe and the characters are therefore created to reflect a western/european style, I thought it was fair to make it through that lens. But yeah this is only one video from one perspective and I would love to see more FF style videos that came from a non-western interpretation too, that would be equally as valid!
I’ve been DYING for someone to do a video talking about gender representation as it pertains to final fantasy villains.
And especially for 8 which is unique in the franchise because I haven’t played FF14-16 so I could be wrong here but I’m pretty sure it’s the only mainline game with an end of game boss who is a woman. Not just a gender non specific entity in the shape of a woman like Cloud of Darkness or a Jenova or tangentially an antagonistic threat near the end of the game like Lady Yunalesca. Granted a similar critique applies to their designs as the witches here- and to the overwhelmingly manscape of the male villains in the series.
Just as we can see Adel’s overt power and hypermasculinity on a female form as a way to codify villainy having Kuja be a fancy little lavender haired femboy in a thong and cropped jacket all day (which btw, goals) is doing the exact same thing. Sephiroth is a genius design for having ethereal elements that cancel each other out where he’s somehow very masculine and feminine in design, he seems very old and vibrantly youthful he’s strong but sleek his outfit goes in tight and then flares out and is just black and white. He’s a fascinating gender case study in himself. And we could go on and on with more conventional brutish masculine designs or a kind of agendered chaos of Kefka- but it just scratches something in my brain to hear someone FINALLY dedicate more than a passing comment to it about the sorceresses of final fantasy 8.
The most recent DLC Dawntrail for FFXIV does have a female antagonist, but for the most part there are two male antagonists who act as red herrings. Aside from that, there is a couple of minor antagonists who are female, Tsukuyomi is perhaps the most well realised from the Stormblood DLC. It's a shame really, I feel the FF franchise is well primed to have some great female antagonists so it's surprising that after 16 main titles we've only seen two have major female antagonists and one was from a DLC.
This was really interesting to watch. I always thought Seifer's outfit looked a little out of place compared to others. Would you consider looking at the other character's outfit designs?
Question Game Dove: are you Irish or Scottish?
Isn't ellone also a sorceress?
Nope. She was hunted to be a possible vessel for a witches power, but her abilities are independent from sorcery
@sh1yo7 oh weird I always thought her ability was just a special ability she had as a sorceress.
This isnt a complaint, but I dont think Adel was necessarily trying to look for a successor even though several characters say this. I think she was rounding up girls to absorb into herself to become more powerful.
If the FF8 historical records are true, situations with more than one sorceress at the same time being active are pretty much unheard of, it could be because most of them hide like Elleone and Edea but I dunno if a witch could give their power to another witch.
Adel created an Empire and, knowing she will end up dying sooner or later (she was at war literally with the rest of the planet), it isn't far fetched to think she wanted to groom a girl she could pass her powers into and continue the war.
Are you trying to saying to say Adel ain't s*xual? Really?