I KNOW EVERY THING ABOUT ADVENT CHILDREN

*On Yazoo's page, it refers to the Velvet Nightmares as "gunblades" in the English text. This is strange because it doesn't do that in the Japanese text, and this reference to the weapons as gunblades never shows up again. Of course, they aren't like the gunblades in Final Fantasy VIII even if these weapons are meant to be classified as such, because those weapons could only be used as swords (according to FFVIII's Ultimania) and the Velvet Nightmares can only be used as guns (according to all of the official AC sites).

*Kazushige Nojima's first name is mistakenly written as "Kazunari" at one point in English, most likely a result of "Kazunari" and "Kazushige" sharing the same kanji. I've seen this mistake before.

*They don't keep certain romanizations consistent. "Veld" is written as both "Veld" and "Verdot" on the same page in the Before Crisis section.

*"Sears" and "Shears" are both used in the Before Crisis section.

*Another Before Crisis point to note: "Elfe" is written like that instead of with an accent mark over the second "e."

*Rosso from Dirge of Cerberus is referred to with "he" instead of "she." Obviously a mistake, as she is very much a woman. This was probably because Japanese people aren't used to using pronouns.

*Vice's/Weiss' name is romanized as "Weiss." Hopefully it stays that way since "Weiss" actually does mean "white" (in German).

*An in-universe explanation for why Loz often moves with a blue blur behind him is not given. It's simply said that because he's so big and bulky, they wanted to off-set his girth by making him look really fast and used the blue blur only for him to emphasise that he's fast. It's not suggested -- despite how often people think so -- that it has anything to do with his Dual Hound weapon.

*Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo are referred to as physical manifestations of Sephiroth's spirit and will three times in the English text, with the specific wording used in Japanese being something akin to "will bodies of Sephiroth's thoughts" on one of those occasions and "phantoms of Sephiroth" on another. Also, Kadaj is said to represent Sephiroth's cruelty, while Yazoo represents his allure and Loz represents his strength.

*It's confirmed that the silver-haired men's desire to find Jenova's remains and merge with them is due in part to Sephiroth's desire to be restored goading them without them knowing it.

*No explanation for where the SHM got their bikes is offered, but Takeyuki Takeya (the monster and mechanical art designer for the film) said that he designed the SHM's bikes with the impression that they're very generic and that there might be tons of bikes just like them. They probably stole them from somewhere.

*No explanation for the SHM's cell phones is offered either. However, I bet they stole them from Elena and Tseng since they had to get the other Turks' number somehow.

*At one point in the English text, Nojima refers to Sephiroth's motivation largely being revenge against Cloud because of how badly his pride was hurt when Cloud turned the tables on him in the Mt. Nibel mako reactor. More notably, it says that this defeat was made all the worse because Cloud was a "rookie SOLDIER" at the time. This, of course, is a mistake, as Cloud was never in SOLDIER, and the Japanese text there doesn't say "SOLDIER." At least not in reference to the elite squad, which is always written in katakana. It uses the kanji for "rookie soldier," meaning a regular private in the army. Just thought this should be pointed out before we had people going "They're contradicting their own continuity!" or "I knew Nojima was on LSD!"

*It's mentioned that after Sephiroth jumped into the Lifestream back in Nibelheim, his body dissolved, but because of his powerful will, he reformed it at the Northern Crater, where his life energy and Jenova's head were washed to. This most likely is why he only seemed to have a torso when he cast Meteor (he was still reforming his original body), and why the Ultimania Omega says that he was regenerating in the Northern Crater.

*The Shadow Creepers are referred to as Summons (capital "s").

*The short CG production by Square's Visual Works department (the project that eventually became Advent Children) was began in January of 2002. It wasn't until March of 2003 (when Final Fantasy X-2 was released in Japan) that the official go-ahead was given to the Advent Children project itself. In other words, you can say that Advent Children's pre-production began in January of 2002.

*The real world footage from AC's credits and Reminisicence of Final Fantasy VII was filmed in Hawaii.

*Takeyuki Takeya designed Cloud's First Tsurugi. He says that he doesn't know what the individual names of the swords are, nor what their specific attributes are. "First Tsurugi" is, apparently, the name for the entire set and the completed sword (as most people thought, I believe), and the swords were just called "the fusion swords" during development because they weren't given proper names.

*Nomura said he didn't do the designs for the weapons, creatures, and the Shera airship because he wanted to focus on directing.

*Yusuke Naora designed the Velvet Nightmares and the Dual Hound.

*Yusuke Naora's location design of the shell structure in the Forgotten Capital (Kadaj's base) was the first piece drawn in the film's pre-production.

*Nomura implied that the Shera runs on some ancient non-mako technology, as confirmed in Dirge of Cerberus. Thought not explicitly stated either here or in Dirge of Cerberus, this is most likely part of the FFVII-FFX/X-2 connection.

*Rufus had the Meteor monument built to serve as a reminder of the tragedy. I guess -- since he blamed his company for the Meteor disaster and the planet's weakened state -- he wanted people to remember the errors humanity had made in the past.

*Nojima said that he got the idea for Geostigma from a plot element originally intended for Final Fantasy X, but that wasn't implemented. The idea was that Yuna would have been going around curing diseases all over Spira. He said that since he needed a plot element to cause Cloud to need to protect people weaker than him, he came up with Geostigma.

*Nojima said that he set AC 2 years after FFVII because it's a pretty long time, but also short enough for the past to still be lingering in people's minds. He also said it was long enough for Marlene to have probably started talking a lot.

*Nomura had Cloud take down Kadaj without really grunting or showing any signs of straining himself so that when he was grunting a lot during his fight with Sephiroth and displaying lots of signs of fatigue it would emphasise how much more powerful Sephiroth was.

*It's said that Cloud was "outmatched" when it came to the fight with Sephiroth. Sorry everybody who thinks that Cloud was almost on par with him. He wasn't.

*It's said that Loz fights Tifa to amuse himself. Sorry everybody who thinks that Tifa was probably as strong as him or stronger. She wasn't.

*Nojima said that Vincent has to be dragged into something before he'll take action, and that if it wasn't for the other members of Avalanche being his friends, he probably wouldn't have joined the fight against Bahamut Sin.

*The pink ribbons the characters wear are confirmed to be in remembrance of Aerith.

*The angel statue in Edge and the number of birds flying over Midgar in the opening apparently don't have any specific meaning after all. Nomura said that they had a meaning to him and members of the production staff in a previous interview (I think it was in the AC Prologue book), but apparently they don't have specific universal meanings like the wolf that symbolizes Cloud's guilt. Apparently Nomura just wanted to make people give more thought to what they were watching (that's my guess).

*Nomura said that since Barret is compared to Mr. T so often, they deliberately went out of their way to make him look different from him in Advent Children (yes, he actually said this).

*Vincent's revelation to Cloud in the Sleeping Forest that he had never tried to forgive himself for the things he had blamed himself for was one of the major factors that caused Cloud to realize what he needed to do.

*Nomura said that he sees Vincent and Cloud as being very much alike, only Vincent acts and speaks older (probably because he is).

*At one point, the development team was unsure of why Sephiroth would appear to fight Cloud, and were only certain that he must appear for a final battle with him. They considered various ideas, including Sephiroth only being visible to Cloud, but ultimately went with what we see in the finished film (Kadaj's fusion with Jenova's cells).

*The Madhouse animation studio was selected to create Last Order because they had been used on the anime trailer for Before Crisis, and because the company's president was very enthusiastic about the idea of a FFVII animated feature, and frequently payed visits to Nomura at SE's offices to discuss the idea with him. Because of the enormous support Madhouse was expressing for the project, they were a shoe-in for the job.

*The entire movie occurs over the course of 3 days, beginning at noon on Day 1 and ending at 7:00 AM on Day 3. In othe words, the film occurs over the course of 43 hours.

*The fight between Avalanche and Bahamut Sin/the fight between Reno and Rude and Yazoo and Loz lasts 2 hours.

*The motorcycle chase up through the moment Sephiroth appears lasts another 2 hours.

*It's said that the SHM concluded that the remains of Jenova were under the Meteor monument and commanded the kids to surround it as human shields. Apparently when the children's Reunion instinct led them to Edge, the SHM concluded that the remains of Jenova must be under the monument because Rufus had built it.

*Despite how simple a garment it was, Cid's t-shirt was apparently an extremely difficult piece to animate realistically. Initially, it came off looking rubbery.

*Apparently Yazoo's hair was a pain in the ass to animate.

*The Japanese voice actor for Yuffie has been serving as her voice actor since Ehrgeiz came out.

*The guy who did Cait Sith's voice also did the Japanese voices of Auron (Final Fantasy X and X-2), Tobli (Final Fantasy X-2), and Squall Leonhart (Kingdom Hearts I and II).

*The young guy who did Roxas' Japanese voice in Kingdom Hearts II auditioned to do the voice of Denzel, but Nomura felt he was too old for the role. However, it was this audition that made Nomura think he would be perfect for playing Roxas.

*The original promotional video for AC shown at the Tokyo Game Show in 2003 was all of the development footage that Nomura and his people had at the time. Since they knew they would be unveiling the project only 6 months after it had finally gotten an official go-ahead, Nomura wanted to pack the preview with action shots and then focus on developing everything else around them later.

*Takeyuki's inspiration for much of Bahamut Sin's design was Jomon pottery.

*Nomura said that Midgar covered in greenery 500 years after the Meteor incident symbolizes humans re-embracing nature. Perhaps they won't go with humans dying out after all.

*The English version's April 3, 2006 premiere is mentioned, as is the fact that it was met to a thunderous warm welcome. This is probably what prompted the delay of the book from May 2 to May 22. It's not explicitly stated, but I'm guessing that it was this large show of support from English-reading fans that made SE or SoftBank decide to include English translations of all of the Japanese text in the book (with the exception of a little bit of the production credits in the back). This was the first time this was done with an FF book to my knowledge.

*Mideel was originally going to be used as the film's therapeutic location, but the development team decided to create Healin and utilize it instead because of how far Mideel is from Midgar/Edge.

*Fuel for the love triangle debate: Nomura refers to Tifa as being many things, including a lover/sweetheart (in a romantic/sexual context; koibito), and Nojima says that when he began writing the script for Advent Children, the first thing he was sure of being part of the setting is that Cloud and Tifa were together. That said, Nomura may have meant that Tifa's a lover in the same way people will say "I'm a lover, not a fighter," and Nojima may not have meant "together" in a romantic context. For the record, I think Tifa's got this won, but that's me personally. Let the war continue!

*It was the "Deep Dive" hidden FMV from the original Kingdom Hearts that sparked a desire in Nomura to try making an even more cool-looking battle scene in a CG film in the future. He had a specific desire to use FFVII as the source material, and being that Visual Works had wanted to make a FFVII CG production anyway, once Nomura agreed to go on the project as its director, things gradually took shape.

*In initial sketches, Kadaj was referred to as "Lost Name" because he didn't have a name yet.

*Nojima says that when the water drop appeared in Aerith's church after Cloud and Tifa fell unconscious, their wounds were healed. He said he wanted that water drop to serve as foreshadowing of Aerith's later appearance in the church, as they had given Aerith a watery theme for this movie.

*The original subtitle of the film was going to be "Reunion," but Nomura felt that the word didn't convey the sense of "coming back again" well enough, so he did some research and found the word "advent," which is often used to mean "second coming." Nojima, for his part, wanted "children" in the title, so the two words were combined. Nojima says he feels that the title does a good job of expressing that FFVII is back and that Sephiroth is going to come back during the film.

*Nomura says that despite people often thinking that Rude's black, he thinks that Rude's appearance is more of a South American look.

*Nojima said that even though Rufus' wheelchair was part of his disguise, he really did suffer a lot of injuries from Diamond WEAPON's attack and isn't in the best shape.

*Nojima says that Reno's not so much interested in rebuilding the Shin-Ra Company because he thinks it should be rebuilt. He just thinks the idea sounds cool and exciting.

*Nomura says he gave Denzel wavy hair to make him more unique since it's not a common trait with FFVII's characters.

*Nomura said back around the time of Parasite Eve's production, he had come up with an idea for a game that involved a cat and a dog searching for their missing master. The cat would ride on the dog's back. This idea is what led Nomura to think of sticking Cait Sith on Red XIII's back after they decided not to use Cait Sith's Moogle mount.

*Nomura refers to Red XIII as being "a feline of sorts" and jokes that sticking Cait Sith on him made for more of a cat riding a bigger cat than a cat riding a dog like the idea that had inspired Red XIII carrying Cait Sith.

*When designing Sephiroth for the film, they took various steps to make him seem like something other than an ordinary human, a supernatural entity. For his appearance, they gave him slanted eyes. In rendering him, they never showed him blink. For his lines, Nojima gave him a majestic style of speech that would suggest that his mentality had ascended beyond that of ordinary humans.

*The kanji used for "Sin"/"Shin" in Bahamut Sin's name means "tremor" or "quake." They used the kanji for "shin" in this book, while rendering it in katakana in the AC Prologue book from September, 2005.

*Cloud's final battle with Sephiroth began at 6:00 PM on the story's second day and he woke up at 7:00 AM in Aerith's church on the third day. There's no suggestion of how long he was unconscious, but I'd guess it was anywhere from 10 to 12 hours.

*According to Nomura, the use of materia drains the planet's life energy, this being why the good guys don't use it anymore. There's not an explanation for why its use drains the planet's energy, but based on Sephiroth's explanation from the original game that materia links someone to the planet and allows them to use its powers, its most likely that the materia allows someone to tap into the Lifestream's energy and manifest it as a spell based on the specs of the materia they're using. This would, of course, drain the planet's energy, the same as turning it into electricity would.

*The Shadow Creepers' heads were based on a crow's skull.

*At one point they considered having Yazoo and Loz holding the Shadow Creepers from the beginning on leashes while they rode their motorcycles, but decided not to.

*Originally, the scene with Kadaj talking to Aerith after Sephiroth fell wasn't included. However, they decided to add this scene in late in the production because they wanted to give Kadaj a scene of salvation, as they felt that he was a character who needed to be saved too

OH YEA the REAL movie lasted 3 days wow action so long i saw teh REAL One :evilgrin:

:o Once again I'm impressed. Nice info and all, great movie too.

i am evil and i actually saw the REAL movie :evilgrin:

I saw Advent Children in Japanese and no subtitles. Didn't understand a word they said. That's a bit overboard too Cloud. >_>;, I couldn't tell you that much information if I was about to fall off a 300 foot cliff and my life depended on it.

well i just told ya!

BTW: Real movie. Three days? What does that mean?

I should turn this FF7 battle music off...

heh nice, i saw the japanese version (subbed in english) but you are incredibly lucky to have seen the deluxe version, will they release the dx version or is the bonus stuff on the dvd already?

no not a chance you will ever see it

and they are some other bonus's in the english version like venice film festival footage,trailers for up coming games of Final fantasy VII , delted scenes and the making of advent children

to bad you all cant see the deluxe version

i didnt sit on the couch for 3 days i had to pause the film...took me a week to finish

Knowing me and my boredom I'd of sat on the couch for three days straight.

O_O i wonder if you would survive cuase i wont i can handle a day or 2 but not 3

I have awesome bladder control, and if I get hungry, well i won't because I'll have the food with me! Oh, and staying up isn't hard as long as I have something to entertain me, like twiling a drum stick around my fingers. I once did it for an hour, nonstop.

wow i got bladder control too hehe but i get tired sometimes

I'd probably be able to see it stright....If I had the time. Maybe over Summer Break I would.

haha your nuts man

how amy i nuts?

Black Cloud X definately knows everythin about the movie. I liked the movie. I did think that the supporting characters should have fought jus a tad more, not jus versus Bahamut Sin :-_-: . BUT IT WAS GREAT NONTHELESS :-[ :-[

I got some good screen caps of this movie when Mr. Nest played it on his xbox..

He snapped 500 pics for me to use in CS2

But you never watched it? (*Shock / horror*?)

Wow...I'm wondering the same question. Is it possible?

To wacth a movie just by seing pics of it...weeeiiiirrrrdddd....