The Man in the Black Cape

It was a decade ago... Cartridges were being replaced by optical technologies for game media. The Playstation made it's debut with the pinnacle of RPGs: Final Fantasy VII.

Final Fantasy VII was different. It completely redefined the series. The graphics were the most inconsistent and unfinished of any game in the series, and it didn't matter. It was truly a testament to what good writing and character design could do for a game; a game that stands the test of time even today.

But that's not important.

The Playstation brings a new challenge for 日本語 games. With actual memory comes room for fonts, and therefore...Kanji. Nintendo and Super Nintendo games used only Kana, which made playing the games with a dictionary a bit easier for us 外人. Now, I've already been exposed to a fair amount of Kanji via Manga and other sources, but Final Fantasy VII offers a special challenge for 2 reasons:
1. No Furigana. You have to be able to look up Kanji, which is a talent in itself.
2. The pixels are the size of coconuts. This makes complicated Kanji like 興 rather difficult to make out.
Even so, armed with my three 辞書(dictionaries), I was ready to take it on.

It's really interesting to play in the original language. I'm still progressing throught the first CD, but I've already encountered a lot of dialog that suddenly makes more sense. Sephiroth's surprise at the relationship of The Jenova Project and his mother makes much more sense: The project's name is written: "JENOVA" and his mother is named "ジェノバ" Although they are still pronounced the same, this does have the effect of making the fact that they are the same less immediately apparent.

As for the man in the black cape... As you follow him around, people keep referring to him as "黒いマントルのやつ" or "Guy with a black mantle" I'm guessing the reason they translated this as "cape" instead of "coat" is that they wanted to emphasize the fact that Sephiroth was a bit eccentrically dressed.

Wall Market also makes far more sense; all the dialog is either puns or poetry. More on that in a future post.

Finally, the most important thing: In Japan, Chocobos say "クエっ", or "Kweh."