TFS' Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged

That Sephiroth voice was really good actually, and I loved his constant deadpan delivery on everything.

Sephiroth's attitude was hilarious.

Also, "Cloud" dissing "Ramirez".

edited 28th Oct '17 10:47:44 AM by hardcorefakes

I liked Tifa's jab about how there are no inconsistencies whatsoever in Cloud's recounting of events.

Also, Zangan running in to stop the flames with his punching. "Zangan died immediately." That got the biggest laugh out of me in the whole episode.

Second biggest went to the jab about Cloud's name. "She named me Cloud because she wanted me to reach for the stars but figured I'd only make it halfway."

Biggest laugh for me was Sephiroth using the Pre-Mortem One-Liner Cloud suggested he do, on Tifa.

Biggest non-laugh for me was when Tifa goes from her youthful voice to her current self's near-snarl right after Cloud asks if that is indeed Sephiroth's sword on the ground. Cloud's fanboyism really went far!

Cloud made a rendition of the fucking One Winged Angel song.

They posted the full list of Bahamuts on their patreon. For anyone interested. https://www.patreon.com/file?h=15091530&i=1515474

...Hah, I thought this was a weak start personally.

I know some hate the Tifa-Cloud dynamic, and seeing it balanced a little was interesting, but they leapt right over the cliffhanger from last season. They cut out some easy jokes - Vincent being in the basement, Cloud going into Tifa's house, Cloud's story having inconsistencies.

Few of the characters retained/exemplified their primary shtick - Cloud is the doormat, but here he's the hyperactive younger Cloud and the snarky, somewhat Unreliable Narrator.

Cloud's fanaticism with Sephiroth was overwrought. The conversation with his mom, his bullying of Ramirez, "Clephiroth." And the final scene just the two of them screaming? - I'm sorry but this is some real low-hanging fruit.

Barret giving a gigantic list of Bahamuts A) doesn't make sense within the game's context to begin with (Barrett originally doesn't even know how Materia works, so why would he have a comprehensive knowledge of every single Summon from across the series?), and B) was played perfectly straight, and stopped being funny the second time Cloud's story got interrupted and he was still going.

Tifa getting flak was neat, but again, they skipped right over the cliffhanger from last season. The Flanderization of her martial arts teacher was too on the nose (dude was nothing like that in game). Most of her moves don't sound like sex puns last I checked so that entire jest fell flat. Her ribbing at Cloud over his Sephiroth fixation was weak. We didn't even get Cloud going into her house.

Aerith barely had any lines.

Red having Anything That Moves added to his character sheet was just... ugh.

They tried to make Sephiroth the Comically Serious and he was boring AF, with the constant, obvious reminder that, "yes, he's about to go nuts." Cloud being so obsessed with him that he was ready to forgive Sephiroth for everything so long as he apologized - I don't know, it just didn't grab me.

The only part of this episode that got me laughing was Tifa's father overreacting to Cloud.

edited 29th Oct '17 12:49:50 PM by Soble

Had fun coming up with Bahamuts on the TFS Discord. We kept that going for some time.

A few I made was Sidney Sheldon's If Bahamut Comes, How to Write A Damn Good Bahamut, I Am Not a Serial Bahamut, Too Bahamut to Jail, The 22 Indispensable Qualities of a Bahamut, Street Fighter 2: Bahamut Edition. There's a 60% chance that last one will eventually become a real thing.

Oh and I will agree it's a weaker start, though I'm not sure if it's it or me. I say me because I've read Final Fantasy the Sevening and I consider that the best FF 7 parody I've ever read. Even loved how it parodied Sephiroth's iconic scene by pointing out how he's standing in fire and the pain he's in from it.

edited 29th Oct '17 12:28:57 PM by Prime_of_Perfection

I read part of the Sevening, up to about the Golden Saucer I think. That was years ago and I can't really blame it for making me immune to this or anything. But that was a damned good parody. I need to go back and finish that.

I'm really kind of disappointed with this. I know TFS has made me laugh harder but this premiere was just... weirdly unsatisfying.

TFS always works, to me, because they take the character's personalities and only edge them into more comedic context - Dragonball Abridged is hilarious because a lot of the interactions are close to what the original was. Here it feels like they just kind of dumped us in Cloud's flashback and threw some new character dynamics at us, when they should've continued directly from the part where they leave Midgar and built off the momentum of Cloud finally growing a backbone.

I suspect they'll come back to it, but for now all we got was Red going, "Thank goodness they're friends again."

edited 29th Oct '17 12:53:01 PM by Soble

The Sevening is amazing but sadly hasn't updated in forever.

I mean, his job was literally to have sex with whatever Hojo puts in the tank with him. That Red is at least in theory comfortable with cross-species relations is an aspect of his character that the game swiftly sweeps under the rug after he's defeated and subsequently becomes a party member.

You never fight Nanaki. You instead fight some monster call Sample: H0512. Nanaki actually joins you for that fight.

edited 29th Oct '17 1:14:27 PM by Zelenal

Huh. I could have sworn there was a fight with him.

Shows what I know.

The first joke, about him wanting to ride the bike monster, okay, funny. Him interrupting Cloud's story to ask about how hot the Jenova monster is... I feel like this is going to be his shtick from now on. He'll want to know about the Cait Sith robot, he'll probably try to get it on with Hojo's monster form in Disc 2...

Watching the episode again 'cause I'm eating and needed something to watch and I noticed something.

After the dragon fight, Cloud criticizes Ramirez for not helping in the battle, telling him to "stop sucking up so much". One thing that's interesting about this flashback is the question of what Cloud actually did and what was Zack. Assuming that "Ramirez" is actually Cloud, this creates an interesting implication that the Cloud trying desperately to chat up Sephiroth was really him, while this Cloud chiding Ramirez for sucking up is Zack.

Which makes me question how they're characterizing Zack. Cloud is supposed to be envisioning himself as Zack here, his entire personality is modeled after Zack. Every remark "Cloud" makes is probably something Zack said to him, mixed in with events Cloud actually participated in. It makes sense, but Zack being a hyperactive Sephdog fanboy? I don't know if I buy it. Then again, I don't remember what he was like in Crisis Core.

is that Cloud being a dork and exaggerating things, or is it Cloud accurately depicting what Zack was like but misrepresenting who was who in which scene?

edited 29th Oct '17 5:19:12 PM by Soble

It seems possible that Cloud's mixing up Zack's memories with his own, which I think is an intriguing way to take things.

That's what I think is happening. Whether "Cloud" is actually Cloud or Zack changes from scene to scene.

Zack in Crisis Core was basically Sora 2.0.

edited 29th Oct '17 5:16:35 PM by Lionheart0

Yeah, from what I can tell, Cloud's personality was always based more off Sephiroth than Zack. I haven't played all the way through FFVII yet (this series is my primary incentive to, by the way) but I've seen a bit of the flashback with Cloud and Zack on the truck, and I think I remember Zack being just as much of a goofball there as he was in what I know of Crisis Core. (Someone who's actually played both games, feel free to correct me.)

I'm once again inclined to argue with people who say they only watch the abridged series - and this has happened with Dragon Ball - that watching the absolutely hilarious parody is probably going to make the original version less entertaining.

Because you've adapted to their exaggerated personalities, it makes the bases of those personalities less fascinating. There may be 5 people who claim this isn't the case, but that's five people. It's making the more palpable moments lighter and, going back through them in their original context, probably less believable.

It's hard for me to watch or hear DBZ in the original voices and I grew up listening to those voices everyday after school, just because I've watched the Abridged so many times - it does clean up some of the mistakes in the original DBZ, but a lot of the humor is derived from those same mistakes the original version made. I mean, you don't watch Spaceballs without knowing a little about Star Wars, or watch Scary Movie without having seen at least one horror film, right?

tl,dr I would get to playing VII before finishing this series whenever it finishes. Though off the top of my head I suppose we haven't come across anything yet that's really required an understanding of the original plot to understand...

Well that, and VII is just a good game, Compilation be damned.

edited 29th Oct '17 9:30:36 PM by Soble

I second the notion. VII is a legit great game and you really should play through it before the abridged series gets too far.

Cloud is absolutely copying Zack, not Sephiroth. The chances are good that the image of canon Cloud you have in your head is based on his Kingdom Hearts and Advent Children self (which makes perfect sense in context) rather than how he is in VII.

We don't actually see much of Zack in VII since he's, ya know, dead but we can compare how Cloud acts to how Zack acts in Crisis Core.

I also disagree with the idea that the Compilation is bad. Crisis Core is a damn good game and I still consider Advent Children Complete to be a good followup to the themes presented in VII.

Nonono, see, I'm playing the game so that I've been through each part being abridged before I watch the corresponding episode. It's incentive because I want to be done with it before the series so I know the context.

Cloud's memories seem to be a mixture of Zack's memories and shit that Cloud has made up to make it more believable. For example, in the original game, Tifa doesn't react to Cloud at all when he first tells the story, but here we have her father going on a rant about how he never writes and how his princess has been asking after him for two years. If the idea that Cloud was masked the whole time is still there, that rant shouldn't be there, so Cloud probably made it up.

edited 30th Oct '17 5:27:42 AM by Sannom