Sephiroth is one of the most infamous characters in the Final Fantasy franchise, even appearing in other Square Enix games like Kingdom Hearts. As the main antagonist of Final Fantasy 7, he is portrayed to have been the cause of some of the more horror-focused aspects of the game. And according to Final Fantasy 7 producer Takashi Tokita, Sephiroth definitely scared the hell out of him. Here’s what he had to say about it.
The Sephiroth Cutscene in Question
Throughout the entirety of Final Fantasy 7, there are plenty of cutscenes that we can choose from to judge which Sephiroth scene is the scariest. However,, according to Final Fantasy producer Takashi Tokita, there’s one particular scene that sends chills right down his spine.
The scene in question is the cutscene in Nibelheim, specifically, the flashback where Sephiroth encounters his mother at the Nibel Reactor. In this scene, Sephiroth discovers the being known as Jenova, whom he believes to be his deceased mother and an Ancient (Cetra). This discovery, following his perusal of the Shinra Manor research notes, causes him to descend into madness and destroy Nibelheim.
Takashi Tokita Opens Up About His Reaction to the Infamous Scene
This particular scene terrified Tokita. The original Final Fantasy game worked with early 3D technology, nothing that was ever experienced in at-home consoles, and the effect it had on people worked well as a great jump scare. Apparently, it worked too well, as it scared Tokita half to death while working on the original game. Tokita took to social media to share his reaction to the scene. Tokita posted on X,
“When I was doing work on my PC during FF7’s development, suddenly the Jenova cutscene started playing on the PS dev kit’s monitor, and I felt like I was about to get a heart attack,”
The reason Sephiroth does well as an antagonist is because of how his descent into madness is portrayed to us as the audience. We see him at his highest, as a hero of Midgar, to his fall from grace, turning him into one of the biggest antagonists in the franchise, and now we know he is one of the scariest as well, according to Takashi Tokita.
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