Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

FINAL FANTASY VII: Advent Children
Two years after the events of Final Fantasy VII, the Planet is recovering from the devastating attack by Meteor, while the survivors of Midgar have begun to build a new city, aptly named “Edge”, on the outskirts of the old metropolis.

Advent Children is a 2005 computer-animated film directed by Tetsuya Nomura, co-directed by Takeshi Nozue, and written by Kazushige Nojima. It was produced by Yoshinori Kitase, and the soundtrack was composed by Nobuo Uematsu. Advent Children was the first announced title in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII series.

The film is based on the highly successful role-playing game Final Fantasy VII from 1997. It is set two years after Final Fantasy VII and one year before Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, and follows Cloud Strife as he unravels the cause of the mysterious plague “geostigma” that has beset the population.

The initial DVD and UMD release of the film in 2005 was voiced in Japanese. The English-dubbed versions were released on April 25, 2006. The film got a relatively positive reception, and received the “Maria Award” at the Festival Internacional de Cinema de Catalunya in 2005. As of 2006, the DVD and UMD releases of Advent Children has sold over 2.4 million copies worldwide.

The idea for Advent Children came about when script writer Kazushige Nojima wrote a script that was “just a story about Cloud and Tifa and the kids”. Visual Works, a company that has developed CG films for Square, picked Final Fantasy VII as the theme for a presentation that they were going to create. Square’s research and development department worked with them on its launch, and director Tetsuya Nomura joined the crew after producer Yoshinori Kitase called him. Advent Children was originally going to be a game sequel, but Nomura stated that it was not possible due to a number of factors. However, the development team decided to stick with the original plan and work on it as a movie production.

After Square and Enix merged into Square Enix in 2003, the production of the film started. As there was little time, Nomura began by developing a textual storyboard instead of a visual storyboard. He made a timeline of the story and wrote down all the elements of the story from the beginning to the end as keywords. The production team used motion capture in the film’s battle scenes, but the parts that were not humanly possible had to be done by hand.

Director: Tetsuya Nomura, Takeshi Nozue

producer: Yoshinori Kitase, Shinji Hashimoto

Writer: Kazushige Nojima

Cinematography : Yasuharu Yoshizawa

Composer: Nobuo Uematsu