25 Years Of Laughing Through It (Some Thoughts On Final Fantasy X)

(Spoilers for Final Fantasy X abound. You've had 25 years, gang. Go play it.)

It's funny how synchronicity and coincidence works sometimes. What you've done before, what you're doing now, and what you're planning to do all coalesce into this reflective mirror of timelessness. Is it future, or is it past? Yes. That particular swirl of synchronicity, this time at least, has led me to write these words. Right now it's July 19th, 2026. 25 years ago to this day, Final Fantasy X came out for the PS2. Last week, I beat that game for the first time and had a lot of thoughts about it, which I intended to write down when I gave things a moment to settle. The moment is now because of even more of those synchronicities. Yesterday afternoon, I finalized tentative plans for a summer vacation to be taken near the end of the month, to a little town in Newfoundland called Grand Bank. I may have mentioned it on the blog before, or to you if we've spoken before, but suffice it to say that Grand Bank means a lot to me. It's the town my grandparents as well as aunts and uncles lived in, and I consider it a second home. I try to get there once a year, a pilgrimage of sorts to soothe my soul and refresh my energies. Let me tell you about how these two things, Final Fantasy and Grand Bank, came together in a wonderful coincidence that changed my life forever.

This is my story.

It's 25 years ago, sometime in the summer of 2001. I want to say it was July, and the mists of time have obscured the exact facts so let's go with that. It makes a nice story. I was travelling solo to go visit my grandparents over in Grand Bank. I took a boat. I was wearing orange cargo pants, which were either the style at the time or I was just a weirdo. In later years I've remarked how much of an old soul I am, the type to play around with VHS tapes and retro video games in the year of our Lord 2026. I was always like this, one step behind the times. You know what I brought for entertainment? A cassette Walkman with some tapes (I do recall a lot of Nelly Furtado on there, I was into her at the time) and a Super Nintendo. This was the most recent home console I had, with my most up-to-date handheld being a Game Boy Color I bought with winnings from a Bingo night at school. Thrilling, I know. Anyway, I arrive in Grand Bank, get situated in my grandparents' lovely basement, itself a retro throwback of 70's aesthetics and my own personal sanctuary for this trip and many more to come. After a while I go out and find myself at a nearby video rental store. Fascinatingly, the place still had a handful of SNES games for rent. I know they had Earthworm Jim 2, and also Doom for the SNES. It's not as if I hadn't encountered this place before. In 1996 I rented Super Mario RPG and enjoyed that. Some time later I recall passing up Yoshi's Island, which looked like a baby game for babies, for an awesome-looking one where Mario travelled in time. What a fool I was. Here in July 2001, though, I happened upon this.

This imposing thing called out to me, and so I rented it. I walked back home, back to that lovely little basement, and on a teeny tiny CRT I experienced modern art. Final Fantasy "III" (though it's really VI, we all know that now) absolutely enthralled me for the day or so I got to play it. Mysterious green-haired girls, this strange and obtuse (to me at the time) battle system, a resistance against an empire, and the power of magic. I was hooked. I maintain that the perfect time to hit your first Final Fantasy game is in adolescence, and this was it for me. In many ways, it could be argued that this one decision to rent a weird-looking SNES game changed the course of my life. Let me map it out for you, gang, a grid of my personal and secret history, and let us briefly glide across the nodes that make it so. This game got me hungry for RPGs. Later that same summer, it got me into a cinema in the capital city to see Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. (I still admire that film a great deal.) Even at this time, I was a teenage ROM fiend and so I got my hands on all the 16-bit RPG classics. FFs 4, 5, and 6. Chrono Trigger. Most pertinent for this grid of my life, though, is Earthbound. A quirky game with charms that worked its way into my heart. It's my love of Earthbound which helps me bond with another friend some years later, and some years after that they send me a link to a video series on the recently released (and untranslated) Mother 3 where some French-Canadian plays through it and summarizes the untranslated text for us. It was a Let's Play.

(If I may take a brief aside again, I'd like to speak to that friend directly, on the off chance they may be reading this. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I owe you an immense debt of gratitude for the journey that seemingly innocuous decision from 20 years ago sent me on. I cannot thank you enough, and I miss our talks a great deal. This is like, the third time I've reached out after an absence of talking to you because I've become reflective about something and realize just how much you've changed my life. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. If, by some miracle, you are reading this, feel free to reach out and say hi. I'd love to speak with you again, to catch up, to see how life has treated us both. All my best to you. I hope we can meet again.)

A year later, I'm doing those of my own. They're shoddy quality, yes, but they unlock an even wider world. I make more friends in this community, I join more communities, and it's like ripples in a pond from here on out. From people who first find my stuff and befriend me, to folks who see my dumb videos as formative content and seek me out years later, to people who spark the deepest joys in my heart. All met because of these ripples. All met because of this one Let's Play. All met because I had a hankering for RPGs, sparked by a Final Fantasy game I rented 25 years ago. 25 years later, and here I am after all those ripples. Another dear person to me has hyped up Final Fantasy X to me, as I have my beloved VI to them. So it is that I decide "fuck it", and fire that shit up on a PS Vita (because, despite my age, I'm still that dumb kid in orange cargo pants who brings a Super Nintendo on summer vacation in the age of the PS2 and Gamecube.). Now, after god knows how much waffling, I'd like to pay tribute and actually talk about the game.

That's not the real box art, but I love 
Yuna so much that fuck it.

FFX is a game about death. Death looms over all aspects of life in the fantasy world of Spira that you find yourself in, beseiged as it is every 10 years by the dread beast Sin. Ritualistic pilgrimage and ceremony soothes Sin, for a time, but never completely ends the cycle of suffering and loss. The devout of this world claim that Sin is their punishment for humanity's hubris a thousand years ago, an Original Sin that must be atoned for by strict followings of the teachings of the church. (More on them in a bit.) Even death is not enough to sever the bonds of the living from this world, as in Spira there is the concept of the unsent: those who still cling to the world after their physical death, existing in a state between a ghost and a zombie with lingering regrets or sheer force of will, or both. Some remain unsent out of obligation, others out of petty desire for power. The typical fantasy monsters you encounter in random battles in the game, fiends, are the twisted remains of those who refused to accept death peacefully and grew envy over the living, becoming monstrous and now trying to bring death to all.

FF has been no stranger to death and the cycle of rebirth. Look no further than FFVII and the Lifestream (and to a lesser extent, The Spirits Within movie: just because it didn't have Recognizable FF Characters doesn't mean it wasn't an FF movie in spirit, but I digress) to see this in action. Here, though, the proceedings are grim indeed. The pilgrimage you go on to take the summoner Yuna across the land to eventually gain the power to quell Sin for another decade looks like a happy journey on the surface, but good God are things fucked up. You witness a Sin massacre twice, learn just how petty and corrupt the powers that be are, and then make it to the holy ruins of an ancient city wherein you learn the true truth of this endless cycle of death. It's macabre stuff, and all you can do in the face of it is laugh.

Which brings us to that fucking scene. If you know anything out of context about FFX, you know that fucking scene. The scene where protagonist Tidus does a bunch of hammy over the top fake laughing. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. You can fucking hear it when I type it out like that, can't you? For years it's been seen as a nadir for FF, a sign of how far we've fallen and how far we have yet to fall. Cringe. Adolescent fantasy cringe. Friends, gang, readers. We have been lied to. For 25 years I have been lied to. The laughing scene not only makes sense in context, but gains even more poignancy once you realize what the characters of Tidus and Yuna are burdened by in this moment, what pain they're suppressing with their corny laughter, and how they'll connect and help heal each other over the course of their journey. For Tidus, it's the knowledge that somehow the soul of his estranged father is a part of Sin, something he can sense whenever they encounter the dread beast. His dad was a real piece of work, an alcoholic and a bully who was always verbally abusing the boy, yet also is lauded as a Spiran hero who helped stop Sin a decade prior. Tied to that is Yuna's reason for laughing through the pain: the pilgrimage to stop Sin and gain the final summon needed to do so is one that will end in her death. Naive Tidus, fish out of water he is, doesn't realize the stakes at play until midway through the game, and has a real crashout about how he laughed and joked with her about what they'd do after her pilgrimage without knowing.

Again, synchronicity and coincidence coaelesce, and all of this is connected. Tidus and Yuna are connected, and they express their budding love in a scene resplendent with beauty. I love how in that scene, Yuna jokes about calling off the pilgrimage before breaking down because she simply cannot abandon the suffering people of Spira for her own selfish wants. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, or so she thinks right then and there. As it happens, the ruling power in Spira is perfectly happy to abandon the needs of the many in favor of consolidating their own power. Witness Seymour Guado, recurring antagonist of your group, who commits regicide, lusts for Yuna just as much as he does power, and ultimately has such an obsession with death that his grand plan is to merge with Sin and give Spira its salvation from its endless misery by just killing everyone. Or the power he represents, the Church Of Yevon. Yevon are fascinating antagonists, and though it's not at all surprising to say that the church in a Japanese RPG is actually antagonistic, this is the first mainline FF game to do such a plotline. (FF Tactics on the PS1 also did it, to great acclaim.) They are a hypocritical lot whose unsent rulers cling to their power, cling to the old ways, and refuse to entertain the idea that better things are possible. Instead we hold on to the old traditions, to the cycle of death and rebirth, to that which keeps Yevon in control of Spira and keeps the populace at day while Sin returns time and time again, killing more of them until some devout Summoner throws their life away to maintain the status quo.

Now, many Western fans will look at Yevon and think it's a sendup of a Western religion like Catholicism. Death of the author, sure, but from the little pokings around I've done, it seems that Yevon and the antagonists of the game are actually closer to a corruption of the values and teachings of Buddhism. I'm not that knowledgeable in the matters of faith, so take all of that with a grain of salt of course, but just something worth mentioning. Honestly, I think the most fucked-up yet apt part of all of this is the leader of Yevon, Mika. Mika is an unsent clinging to life in undeath to keep Spira on this unchanging path. When Yuna and her pals completely fuck up the ritual in such a way that now we have to destroy Sin, rather than just placate it as usual, Mika just... decides to move on to the afterlife. He'd rather pass on than accept the possibility of the world changing. Such narrow fucking thinking. Let's go back a bit and talk about just how you fuck up that ritual. It turns out that at the end of the pilgrimage lies a woman named Yunalesca, the very first to do this thing and placate Sin. In order to complete the ritual, you need to sacrifice one of your closest friends and turn them into the Final Aeon, the fantasy summon needed to stop Sin... except summoning that happens at the cost of the summoner's life. Oh, and inside the heart of Sin is actually a parasitic being that was once Sin's creator, Yu Yevon, which clings to life just as bitterly by possessing any Aeon and turning it into a new Sin. Hey guess what happened to Tidus and Yuna's fathers? Yuna's turned Tidus's into the Final Aeon, summoned him and died, and now Tidus's father is the new Sin. Isn't this cycle lovely? Let's rip it to shreds.

I love everything about the decision your group takes to defy its fate. Auron, the wise mentor who watched his friends, the aforementioned parents, throw away their lives for this shit. He died for it, he's been unsent all along, clinging to existence to fulfill a friend's final wish and fuck this shit up. Yuna, who's been so strong and resolute in this journey, who refuses because while she could have given her life for Spira, she won't do it to any of her friends. Yunalesca herself, who responds to such hopeful naivite by declaring that she will mercifully spare you from the despair that is to come and then turns into a Medusa head and tries to kill you. It's here I should mention the difficulty spike and the mechanics of the bosses in the late game: Up until about the penultimate encounter with Seymour, the game was quite reasonable. With him, things took a jump, and he and Yunalesca were the only bosses to give me serious hassle. I power leveled and tailored my team through it, but it's fitting that the avatars of the needless system of sacrifice in Spira be difficult to overcome: taking down the structure of power is never easy, but these idealist kids can do it with enough determination. Even their attack strategies mirror the ways in which they insist on miring Spira in its cycle of death: both Seymour and Yunalesca's battle plan involves inflicting the Zombie status on your team, which mechanically makes them undead for the purposes of trying to heal them. 

By contrast, once you endure the Final Aeon within the heart of Sin, you are greeted with Yu Yevon as the true final boss. In this fight your entire team is given the auto-life status, so you can never lose. All Yu Yevon does is relentlessly heal itself. Much has been derided about this boss fight, and how it's technically not one but a playable cutscene, how dare the final boss fight in a game be easy, blah blah blah. I'm here for it. If it were a cutscene, it would lessen the impact. Giving you agency here gives the culmination of the story weight. Yu Yevon possesses Aeons, and so you must summon each and every Aeon you've gained over the course of Yuna's pilgrimage, allow Yu Yevon to possess it, and then take them down yourself. You are actively choosing to tear down the old order, to ensure that something new and brighter must be built atop it. In fact, if I may go one step farther, you are choosing life over death in this situation, and that's what the Auto Life status represents: your own refusal to accept the cycle, to continue fighting, to tear down the old order.

Ah, but death comes for us all. Through a series of events that would take too long to explain, it turns out that Tidus was the living embodiment of a dream all along, and will fade away at Sin's defeat. Nevertheless, he faces death with a smile, choosing life for everyone else. Yuna's tearful goodbye to him, and declaring her love for him before he fades away... Few things have emotionally ripped me to shreds as much as that. Just because we choose life doesn't mean we don't have to face the fact of death and mortality. Yuna lost Tidus. I've lost people as well. The grandparents who owned that nice basement where I played FFVI are no longer with me. We never forget them, of course, but we move onward with our lives. We make new memories, we live every day like it's our last, and we forge ahead. Just as Yuna and Spira will do. Just as I will do. FFX was a story about death. At its climax, Spira chose life. One day I may see what that glorious Spira looks like, as there is a sequel (and it looks extremely on brand for me, for reasons). For now, here's where I leave FFX. A fantastic little game. An experience I won't soon forget. An experience that has been touching hearts and minds for 25 years now. I barely scratched the surface of what this game had to offer, but I wanted a more brief overview so here we are. (Brief, I say, knowing full well I probably wrote like 5000 words already, and I'm refusing to check until I'm done.) 

You know, I always had this little tradition when going over to Grand Bank, of sharing media that's important to me in that basement. Imbuing it with the power of things that are important to me. Some of them have been shared on this blog, like Doctor Who and Symphogear and Quantum Leap. Others I haven't told you about, and may keep with me. Even though it won't be in that basement, maybe I'll take that PS Vita with me and play a little of this game or the sequel in Grand Bank. Maybe I'll share that energy, as I have shared my thoughts with you. I hope you have a place as sacred and nostalgic to you as Grand Bank is to me, and I hope that you can share the things and people you hold dearest with it as I have for many years now. Take care, all. I'll be seeing you after my trip. There is one very important piece of media I watched recently, that I'll be talking about, that I'll be revisiting in Grand Bank.

But that's a story for another day.