[Shadow5YA]

Originally Posted by Homura7

People are too obsessed with the idea that the narrative will stay 100% faithful to OG FF7 that they don't even bother to understand what happened at the end of the game.

Spoiler for spoiler:

For starters, the Rebirth part is about Aeris.

- Cloud's decision creates another reality where Aeris lives.

- But then Sefirot merges the worlds, so Aeris dies and all the efforts to change things for the better seems to have been for naught. Except...

- At the end of the battle the whole thing is undone and the realities split again. Because Cloud was the only one who was inside at the time it happened, his consciousness is now inside the new reality that was created with the decision he made, a reality where Aeris lives. So it naturally doesn't come as surprising when Cloud goes to Aeris and tells her to wake up, and she does exactly that. This is the moment Aeris is reborn. Notice how the white whispers and the rainbow hue isolate the two from everyone else that is watching.

Remake and Rebirth were just setting up things, the final part will be where the story will truly undergo major changes. It's about time you understand that you're playing a sequel.[/SPOILER]

The reason why she does that is because

Spoiler:

This is from Cloud's perspective, who is in denial and coping.

Aerith is everyone's friend, yet at the end she only talks to Cloud. Whenever Cloud looks, Aerith is conveniently there. The reason why he's not upset, is because he geniunely thinks she's still alive. We saw how Aerith looked briefly from Tifa's perspective, and her eyes weren't open. Regardless of whether the blood is there or not, she is dead either way.

They deliberately did not directly show the iconic scene where Cloud drops her body into the water. Why? Because from Cloud's perspective, he's not grieving her death at all.
Let's not forget that when Aerith was actually alive, she was someone who didn't want to put her friends into harm's way, and straight up told Cloud to forget about Sephiroth and focus on himself. Yet now all of a sudden she's asking him to promise he'll fight Sephiroth?


Also to be clear, a spirit Aerith does exist somewhere, as that's who saved Zack. Sephiroth sent him to a world that was about to be destroyed, but he escaped thanks to Aerith's help. However, that is not the same Aerith that Cloud has been seeing after the fight. He is actively repressing her death, just like he did with Zack's.