Empires and The Dancing Mad
“'Tis foolishness! Why, if all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!”
- Lord Avon, I Want To Be Your Canary, Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy is a series that has covered many themes in its long years, from royalist uprisings and eco-terrorism to religious intolerance. One of the themes revisited time and time is that of war, unsurprising considering the profound effects of wars both inflicted and experienced by Japan. When Yoshinori Kitase and Hironobu Sakaguchi wrote Final Fantasy VI (Square, 1994) and Final Fantasy IX (Square, 2000) they, again, placed war at the forefront of their narrative. Japanese media has a complicated history of grappling with the impact of modern conflict from a Japanese perspective that often minimises their involvement in lieu of emphasising domestic trauma, such as the nuclear analogues of Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1954) and Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata, 1988). Final Fantasy VI and IX, similarly, approach Japan’s history of conflict from a close frame of reference, at once presenting devastating images of domestic trauma while undercutting their anti-war themes with pulled punches and displaced responsibility.
The opening text of Final Fantasy VI, overlooking a town resting within a canyon. The text reads: “Could anyone truly be foolish enough to repeat that mistake?”
In Final Fantasy VI, war is foundational for the formation of the world—the opening text crawl states that 1000 years ago the War of the Magi destroyed the World of Ruin, and questions whether anyone would be so brazen as to repeat the mistakes of the past. The answer is yes, as we come to the World of Balance and find that war has already broken out again and the Gestahlian empire is well on its way to conquering all. The mood is bleak in the oncoming march of an empire determined to unite all under its salute. An NPC in Figaro anxiously remarks, “the Gestahlian empire has already overthrown all three of the other nations on the southern continent. It's only a matter of time before they make their way up here.” There is a sense of inevitability to the approaching army, the idea that the empire will subsume all under its banner and that not only people, but the planet itself, will suffer. There is, however, one thing that could stop them—the Espers. Magical entities desperate not to be subjugated or to contribute to a war of man, they separate themselves entirely from the world. But their isolation is now threatened, as the Gestahlian empire still craves their power and resources for its violent colonial conquest.
Man is the real monster in Final Fantasy VI, and the beastly Espers merely another victim of warlike aspirations. The empire and all it represents as an outside force—subjugation, colonisation, war, violence—eventually succeed in violently wrenching the Espers from their seclusion. The empire is used to taking things by force. The magi of Thamasa—magic users who were the cause of the War of the Magi years ago—had similar ideas to the Espers and took to isolating themselves, but in time, the outside world came for them, too, burning all they knew to the ground. The Gestahlian empire, with its Germanic naming conventions, salutes, technology, and jackboot-marching music, is an unforgivingly negative portrayal of military power, abused, and used for violent ends. The allegories may not be named—may even, in certain versions, be censored—but the historical implication is clear.
It is violence that does not stop when territories have been occupied. When we go to the southern continent, we get a peek behind the iron curtain and into the daily lives of its citizens. Maranda, a once-beautiful town besieged by General Celes and the empire, is a razed husk of its former self. The empire seeks to unite all under its banner, not to spread peace or a different way of living, but simply because they can. The daily life of its citizens is dire: dogfights happen in the streets, citizens bemoan their loss of freedom, and soldiers drink in the inns with “comfort women,” presented without comment.
And yet, even as life under the empire is overwhelmingly oppressive, its dominion is physical more than mental. Final Fantasy VI is interested in life during occupation as primarily an expression of force rather than will, emphasizing that just because people must live under tyranny, they do not necessarily believe in it. Edgar, king of the besieged Figaro, remarks that, “the empire is evil, but that doesn't mean that all of its citizens are.” This sentiment is echoed throughout by other characters—that the empire is not a monolith, its citizens not beholden to any one unified belief. There is nuance here, too, in the beliefs of the soldiers, many of whom were taken and forced into service for the empire. Some soldiers are proud, some are scared and want nothing more than to go home, and of course, some soldiers are gleeful. Despite their physical complicity in the actions of an empire, there's a sense that for many, they're simply acting out of fear or duty (however hollow an excuse that may be).
A screenshot from Final Fantasy IX, the camera hanging behind a blonde man looking at a stormy night scene of a waterfall pouring into a forest pond.
The world of Final Fantasy IX's Gaia, too, has statues and plaques that memorialise wars of the past whilst portending the eventual outbreak of a conflict with existential consequences. The spectre of war is never far off—war banners wave in the wind long before the battle. Games scholar Cameron Kunzelman, writing for Polygon, notes, “Final Fantasy 9 presents players with a coherent, peaceful world that is shattered and recouped, over and over again, by powerful figures who will trample everyone and everything that stands in their way.” In Final Fantasy IX, we become familiar with a world at peace and witness as it descends into the turmoil and brutality of war. Here, violence is not only a moral corruption of the powerful, but of the everyday: workers in Dali, once farmers, now build mist engines and produce front-line golem-like soldiers. They rejoice that not only is the work easier, but the pay is better too. War is tied, inextricably, to the corruption of morals, of the environment, and of people.
Unlike Final Fantasy VI where we come to a world already half-colonised, Final Fantasy IX opens on the corruption of innocence through the eyes of a child—the black mage Vivi—as he skips through Alexandria's streets on his way to a play. Alexandria is the seat of Queen Brahne’s empire and the home of the sympathetic princess Garnet and ruthless general Beatrix. We come to view Alexandria from many perspectives, including loyal subjects and outsiders, witnessing their sense of normality shattered by war and death encroaching on what was once a placid existence.
Princess Garnet wanted to escape Alexandria to visit her uncle and discuss with him her mother’s increasingly warlike aspirations, but she was too late to save further bloodshed. Entering the neutral nation Lindblum, a Burmecian soldier stumbles in and slumps to the ground, relaying that Alexandria has already laid siege to his city. At this point, we bear witness not to invasion but its direct aftermath. We never see normalcy in Burmecia before Alexandria, the aggressor par excellence, destroys everything. Corpses line the rain-soaked streets; men, women, and the tiny bodies of children laid out like trophies. The imagery is as heavy as it is unapologetic in its striking brutality.
It is in Burmecia that we get our first glimpse of Kuja, the weapons dealer facilitating all this violence, providing both the weapons and manipulations that started the war. This common JRPG trope of an outside influence creating discord to an otherwise pacifistic nation is a strikingly individualistic representation of morality, shifting responsibility off the waring nations and onto the shoulders of a distant manufacturer, a scapegoat that leaves little room for self-reflection. Always it is the outside influence that is ultimately to blame for a country's atrocities. Can, then, the nations be at fault if warmongering was not in their nature but was inflicted upon them? Final Fantasy as a whole would have us say no. It is a strangely insular take for a series that revolves around exploring and witnessing strikingly realised digital worlds, and a perspective that weaponizes imperial perspectives to present its case.
A title card from Final Fantasy IX for the town of Burmecia: Realm of Eternal Rain. A red mage stands inside a gothic gate, the camera panning up at a storm filled sky.
In Burmecia, not only are we introduced to Kuja, but we come to blows with the general of Alexandria, Beatrix. Kuja may have initiated the war, but Beatrix is undoubtedly the sword at the forefront of the army. It is Beatrix who court jesters Zorn and Thorn describe as terrifying. It is she—along with the black mage golems provided by Kuja—who slaughters all Burmecia. As she strikes the player party down (the first time of three failed fights to come), she laments that she will never find anyone with the strength to beat her. Beatrix serves her nation, unquestionably, in an expression of violent loyalty tied to national pride and identity.
It is not until Cleyra is utterly destroyed with summon magic that we get to hear Beatrix’s point of view. The violence of a Summon of Mass Destruction phases her only because, as she says, she would be strong enough to take the nation without the use of such weapons. She is not morally opposed to what she is doing, but in fact takes pride in her individual skill as a violent nationalist. All the soldiers, every weapon conjured by Kuja to enact violence, is simple overkill in her eyes. At no point in her actions does she question Queen Brahne, whose kindling lust for power and destruction is being nurtured by Kuja into an all-consuming flame.
When Beatrix joins briefly as a party member, it is again to defend her nation against what has become an increasingly tyrannical queen's warmongering. She does it to protect her princess, and yet by this stage she has already laid ruin to three nations. At no point does the game reflect upon this. Beatrix simply apologises for not standing up to the queen sooner, and that is the end of that. Her sudden change in morality is not questioned, nor is her complicity in genocidal acts. Instead, it is water under the proverbial bridge. Her goal of strengthening a genocidal nation hasn’t fundamentally changed, she has merely shifted her allegiance now the queen is no longer fit to rule.
Historian Kristin Ronzi describes that, “many Japanese remain unaware of the magnitude of the Japanese war crimes of World War II.” Sociologist Evan Lauteria further elaborates that, “Japanese middle- and high-school youth are given a portrayal of World War II that eradicates the aggressive acts of Japan.” Final Fantasy IX seems to be echoing this cultural amnesia in Beatrix’s uncomplicated redemption. The game strives at times to show the brutal realities of war, but its biggest irony is its refusal to challenge Beatrix’s part in it. The refusal to condemn Beatrix is also a refusal to engage with the complicated actions of individuals in large conflicts, and what it means to serve a country that has waged war with the world. Beatrix simply takes her place on the other side as if she was there all along.
A dialogue box for Beatrix from Final Fantasy IX. She is standing at the bridge of an airship and saying: “I didn’t train all these years so I could take a backseat to anyone…”
This lacking portrayal of a supposedly good general “just following orders” continues with General Celes. Celes was directly named for taking part in the decimation of Maranda. Despite this, very little is done to explore her motivations or reasoning for finally switching sides, it simply happens. Cyan, whose family was killed at Doma, challenges her once and then leaves it at that, while other characters do not question her at all. Eventually, once Kefka has brought ruin upon the world, we take control of Celes and learn a bit more about her past, but the main source of her angst revolves around whether her friends are still alive. Like Beatrix, once Celes’s allegiances change there is no culpability nor space to explore her prior actions. Celes has a brief, single line of dialogue excuse for her loyalty: the empire raised and groomed her to be a Magitek Knight from a young age. An insufficient explanation that is never revisited.
Another military official, Captain Adelbert Steiner of the Knights of Pluto, acts as a foil to Beatrix's zealotry. He too loves his queen and country, and his refusal to admit in the face of overwhelming evidence that Queen Brahne intends to wage war is portrayed as blunt naivete. Steiner simply cannot admit that the Queen he loves would do such a thing, up until she does, and his complacency is challenged and criticised by Princess Garnet and Beatrix alike, a hypocrisy that, again, the game refuses to challenge.
Both Final Fantasy VI and IX, in their explorations of morality and culpability, ultimately refuse to meaningfully challenge the actions of key characters within the narrative. The binary morality of good vs evil supersedes any attempt at exploring the murky ambiguity of these characters or the impact of their actions. Like the Alexandrian soldiers with their pawn-emblazoned shields, Celes and Beatrix were both just doing their job.
The most striking scenes of both games are the clear metaphors of nuclear aftermath. In Final Fantasy VI, the World of Balance becomes the World of Ruin after Kefka unleashes an ancient horror. As Celes comes to, one year later, the sky burns orange and a cruel wind blows harsh and unrelenting, blasting everything grey and brown. There is no greenery, no life. The world map theme is replaced by a funeral dirge and enemies kill themselves before we can. Once again, the world has been irrevocably changed, for the worse, by the weapons of war.
The overworld of Final Fantasy VI after an ancient horror has destroyed the land. The ground is a murky green with patches of debris, the landscape speckled with singed trees and a building covered in holes. A blonde woman in silver armor stands at the entrance.
Like Godzilla before it, Final Fantasy VI places itself in a lineage of cultural explorations of the dual bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the amped-up stakes a fantasy setting can allow. In reality, the Japanese suffered the consequences of America’s actions, but in Final Fantasy VI the entire world suffers and the moral of the story proffers that everyone is harmed in matters of war (albeit indiscriminately and unequally). The great power of weapons of war is again explored in Final Fantasy IX, particularly in the destruction of Cleyra, sister nation to Burmecia. The summon Odin rides in on a great black horse and casts his giant sword down, evoking the spectre of death in a very literal sense as Cleyra is disintegrated in another bright, nuclear flash. Describing this scene, Kunzelmann writes that, “watching the attack on Cleyra or the destruction of Lindblum makes it clear that the game’s designers were going for effects that evoked extensive bombings and the flash of nuclear weapon detonations.”
The first bomb has been dropped on Cleyra, and now another city is in Alexandria’s sights. By the time we reach Lindblum, we are too late to prevent a third attack. We stand vigil as Atomos opens its gaping mouth. When we get to the city gates, we're met with a trail of bodies. An elderly pickle-seller collapses where she stands and laments that her vision is lost. One of the black mages blinded her and she will never see her grandchild's smiling face again. In Final Fantasy IX, the civilian cost of war doesn’t end with the attack. It lingers in everything lost, lives irrevocably changed, the uncertainty of worse to come. The absolute power granted by the war-like decimation of a nation is addictive and heady; Brahne gloats, time and time again, as she swoops in to claim her prize.
How wars were declared and carried out in both games does a striking job of portraying their brutality and the daily trauma experienced by those who live under such regimes. And yet, both games ironically refuse to discuss the actions and culpability of key characters, letting them go free as blame is placed entirely elsewhere. The simplicity of the standard good vs evil trope and the need to band together to fight a greater threat, robs the narrative of any chance to explore the impact of these actions in a meaningful way. Final Fantasy VI and IX attempt to depict war as an existential threat born from greed and the individual failures of men but get trapped by the spectre of war still haunting a culture that would rather just forget.
Citations and further reading
Boyes, Philip. “From Final Fantasy 12 to Uncharted 3: Exploring Gaming’s Orientalist Fantasies.” Eurogamer.Net, 24 Mar. 2018, www.eurogamer.net/from-final-fantasy-12-to-uncharted-3-exploring-gamings-orientalist-fantasies.
Brookins, Erin. “How the Americanized Version of the Original ‘godzilla’ Film Missed the Whole Point.” Collider, 20 Nov. 2023, collider.com/godzilla-king-of-monsters-why-its-bad/.
Consalvo, Mia. “Visiting the Floating World: Tracing a Cultural History of Games Through Japan and America.” Ohio University, 2007, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228489771_Visiting_the_Floating_World_Tracing_a_Cultural_History_of_Games_Through_Japan_and_America.
Dickinson, Bryn. “Final Fantasy XIV Is a Game about the Transition to Capitalism.” Bryn::Writing, 4 May 2021, canmom.art/crit/final-fantasy-xiv-transition-to-capitalism.
Dickinson, Bryn. “Games, Dehumanisation, and Representing People.” Bryn::Writing, 9 Mar. 2018, canmom.art/crit/games-dehumanisation-and-representing-people.
Ferdinand, Ruben. “Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood Makes Its Colonialism as Awful as It Should Be.” Medium, 18 June 2017, urbanfriendden.medium.com/final-fantasy-xiv-stormblood-makes-its-colonialism-as-awful-as-it-should-be-a6e65549fe31.
“Final Fantasy VI – the Horrors of Not Thinking about the Horrors of War.” Marathon Recaps, 26 May 2020, marathonrecaps.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/final-fantasy-vi-the-horrors-of-not-thinking-about-the-horrors-of-war/.
Fowler, Anthony. “RPGFan Chapters Review: Third Editions’ ‘The Legend of Final Fantasy Ix.’” RPGFan, 19 Nov. 2021, www.rpgfan.com/feature/rpgfan-chapters-review-third-editions-the-legend-of-final-fantasy-ix/.
Hultner, Kaile. “Uh-Oh! Stormblood’s Politics Are Kinda Bad!” No Escape, 9 Mar. 2022, noescapevg.com/uh-oh-stormbloods-politics-are-kinda-bad/.
Hyde, Sarah. “Japan’s Way of Remembering World War II Still Infuriates Its Neighbours.” The Conversation, 15 Sept. 2022, theconversation.com/japans-way-of-remembering-world-war-ii-still-infuriates-its-neighbours-45663.
Kunzelman, Cameron. “Final Fantasy 9 Teaches Us about War and How Times Have Changed.” Polygon, 11 Oct. 2017, www.polygon.com/2017/10/11/16460222/final-fantasy-ix-9-war-square.
Lauteria, Evan W. “The Final Fantasy/Frontier: Digital Colonization & Cyber-Nationalism in Final Fantasy XI.” Syracuse University, 2011, https://www.academia.edu/864231/The_Final_Fantasy_Frontier_Digital_Colonization_and_Cyber_nationalism_in_Final_Fantasy_XI. Accessed 2024.
Lee, Nathaniel. “Godzilla Was Created out of Nuclear Disaster in Japan after WWII.” Business Insider, 3 June 2019, www.businessinsider.com/godzilla-wwii-japan-nuclear-bombs-monster-kaiju-fishing-boat-2019-6?r=US&IR=T.
Lelievre, Benoit. “Why You Should Play Final Fantasy VI.” Dead End Follies, 26 Mar. 2020, www.deadendfollies.com/blog/why-you-should-play-final-fantasy-6.
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Nadeau, Paul. “Yes, Japan Has Changed since World War II.” Tokyo Review, 15 Aug. 2018, tokyoreview.net/2018/08/yes-japan-has-changed-since-world-war-ii/.
Nash, Alonzo. “Final Fantasy: The History and Eras of the Iconic Franchise.” Game Crater, 27 Mar. 2024, www.thegamecrater.com/final-fantasy-the-history-of-the-iconic-franchise/.
Park, S. Nathan. “Tokyo Keeps Defending World War II Atrocities.” Foreign Policy, 29 May 2019, foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/29/tokyo-keeps-defending-world-war-ii-atrocities/.
Pulliam-Moore, Charles. “The Influences of Godzilla Minus One Go beyond the Atom Bomb.” The Verge, 4 Dec. 2023, www.theverge.com/23984534/godzilla-minus-one-interview-takashi-yamazaki.
Ronzi, Kristin. “The Impact of World War II on Modern Japan.” Berkley Center Fo Religion, Peace and World Affairs, 2 Oct. 2014, berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/the-impact-of-world-war-ii-on-modern-japan.
Rosario, Mathew. “Colonialism and Revolution: An Analysis of FFXIV: Stormblood.” People Of Play, 4 July 2023, www.peopleofplay.com/blog/colonialism-and-revolution-an-analysis-of-ffxiv-stormblood.
Seo, Gijae. “Shonen Kurabu and the Japanese attitude toward War.” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 52, no. 1, 6 Mar. 2020, pp. 49–67, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-020-09402-z.
Writer, Jan. “On Final Fantasy VII Remake, the Philippines, and Western Colonialism.” Medium, 9 June 2023, janwriter.medium.com/of-final-fantasy-vii-remake-the-philippines-and-western-colonialism-b93e922e3afa.
Jessica Hill (she/they) is a disabled, queer, nonbinary pixel artist and (occasional) writer. Read more of their writing on Substack, and find their art (along with ways to support them) on Kofi and Patreon. Follow them on Twitter @gothycrip for streams of consciousness, mostly revolving around old games, monsters, horror, and cats.
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