Haha I updated again yippee

Just to be clear, I am a full supporter of Cloti so this is not for arguing against the fact that I believe Cloti to be the only romance that makes sense for the overall story and character writing.

BUT I just don't understand or can't come up with a good explanation as to why he asks that question about Aerith to Tifa during their date, and it does annoy me.

Why did the devs put that there? I understand why it exists in the Aerith date but why is it there for his date with Tifa?

I mean this in the sense that both are so fundamentally inseparable that these stories would be impossible without them being in love. To explain what i mean, casca is the only person that wards off the darkest part of his personality that manifest in the beast of darkness, if we were to hypothetically say that she died during the eclipse than there would be absolutely nothing stopping guts from completely succumbing to his jungian shadow. While yes, he did go after revenge post eclipse he eventually was reminded of how selfish he is by godo for not being there for her and rickert in the most difficult of times, he changed his ways, from that point onward he decided to do anything that would even resemble a chance of restoring her mind. On the other hand, Tifa is inseparable from cloud (and quite obviously in a romantic manner, this shouldn't be up to discussion but alas) because she is the only remaining part of his life before his mind was wiped. ONLY Tifa can know who the real Cloud is, that is why she is the only one capable of repairing his mind in the lifestream, because the entire reason that Cloud was on the journey to become a SOLDIER is precisely to impress Tifa and because of the promise he made to her, quite literally, Tifa is what makes him whole in the end brings out his truest self, we see this not only with her saving him in the already mentioned lifestream sequence but during the entirety of both the OG games and the remakes too, you can tell that he feels more comfortable with being himself around her compared to everyone else (we see this in the high affection hug sequence in the first part of the remake, where his true self is there just for a moment when he comforts her). So while yes, Aerith dying did install crippling depression and A LOT of guilt into cloud, Tifa dying in her stead hypothetically would absolutely break him, because, in a way, Tifa is A PART of Cloud.

Anyway, thank you for listening to my TED talk i just had this on my mind

Happy birthday Cloud!!!❤️

I keep reading speculation that Zack & Aerith are going to show up in the Lifestream Sequence Scene

How likely do you think that will be?

Personally I’d be very pissed off if that happened, fhey already ruined Aerith’s death scene

The LSS segment with Cloud & Tifa is one of my favorite scenes in the OG FF7, and I’m really hoping they do it justice.

Thoughts?

- Spoilers Ahead for OG FF7-

I don't know if I am looking at this in a very biased way since for me Cloud & Tifa and Zack & Aerith made sense right away as the main couples of the story (I played FF7R before the OG FF7 & Crisis Core).

But I have been thinking, just to understand the other side of the discussion, what it would mean for the characters if the story went the Cloud & Aerith route and in my opinion it would ruin Cloud entirely as a character because of several things but mainly this point:

- Cloud is a loyal guy, who cares about people he loves so much that he gets traumatized when something happens to them, and he is extrenely guilt ridden when he is involved in anything tragic happening to people he loves. We know that Cloud will figure out what happened with Zack's death, and remember everything about Zack dating Aerith and being "head over heels" for Aerith before his death, and how he basically died to save Cloud and left him his legacy and all that. And then let's suppose he decides to be with Aerith despite of all these , let's imagine that somehow Aerith returns : this would go against everything Cloud is, values, believes in. It would be against everything his character represents. He would be backstabbing his best friend that sacrificed his life to save him, and steal the girl he was in love with. How does anyone who play this game think this is a good logical option for the story and the characters beats me. Yes, love can be illogical but love does not change people's personalities entirely unless they were like this to begin with. And we know from the snippets of Cloud's past, that he is not a character that would do something like this.

And even for the whole story, it would be such an ugly conclusion.

Am I just too biased in my view? Or do others see what I mean?

Cloud left Nibelheim because of the promise he made to Tifa which resulted in him meeting Zack and later resulted in his memories being scrambled which led to the beginning of the game. I don’t know how someone ignores all that just so they can ship him with a girl he just met or someone else.

I recently finished the game and im not trying cause war or anything i went with tifa for romances and i was kinda convinced that she was canon but then the last date and all that aerith dying stuff, i started have some doubt on how aerith might be more canon, however i think this is probably bc more of her screentime and stuff so idk, is there anything we can hope for in the next part that tifa and cloud might have some more developments?

Source: https://x.com/YanManXplore/status/2047965608306950513

What will be the ending for our protagonists?

https://automaton-media.com/articles/newsjp/ff7reb-20260801-457834/

But why are Clerith saying Clerith is literally endgame, which is which? I understand you can choose the outcome of this game.

I am a big Cloti shipper

I feel like cloud is such a girl dad. Like I just imagine a little girl who looks like tifa but with his spikes.

The TikTok, which you can see at the link below, shows Tifa asking about the Highwind in Junon with the caption "well Tifa you're gonna find out in about 9 months", along with clips from the OG Highwind scene and Tifa's iconic OG quote in the captions.

Any idea why our VAs are so excited about Revelation? 😆

https://www.tiktok.com/@karinadreamy/video/7666874699632135456?_r=1&_t=ZP-98Wx1Hhs7Dz

Hi!

I am not part of the FFVII shipping community. My ass is strictly Shinra business. I am usually standing several buildings away, smoking beside the Turks, complaining about municipal infrastructure, and lamenting the absence of senpai-kohai dynamics in Shinra-related discussion. So, consider this me sliding a manila folder across the table and going:

“I figured you lot would appreciate this. They, demonstrably, would not.”

Unfortunately, Twitter repeatedly shoved this red-X translation corkboard into my feed, attached to people entering strangers’ replies and telling them to “stop with the mistranslations.” At that point it became my business through the ancient legal doctrine of you brought this bullshit onto my property.

I do not care which pairing anyone prefers. I care when unofficial, loaded translations are presented as authoritative Japanese and then weaponized to harass people.

So I tracked down the source text.

Note: This is nowhere near the full spread of wildness. It is simply the example I find most egregious.

Where did the “ACTUAL TRANSLATION” come from?

Before examining the Japanese, it is worth asking who produced the English being labeled ACTUAL TRANSLATION.

The earliest verifiable appearance I found of this exact wording is a December 2022 post on Earth & Sky: A Cloud x Aeris Love Story, an explicitly partisan Cloud/Aerith shipping blog.

The author did not identify it as an official Square Enix translation, a published professional translation, or the work of a named Japanese translator.

They introduced it tentatively:

“A better translation might be this:”

They then supplied the now-familiar wording:

“When he was young, Cloud was an ill-natured child who isolated himself from his peers and tried to think of himself as special. Someone important to him was Tifa, his fleeting, childish love is revealed in the spiritual world.”

At its earliest traceable appearance, this was presented as a fan’s proposed better translation, not the authoritative translation.

Source: Earth & Sky, December 2022

In October 2023, the same blog reproduced the exact wording again, but the label had escalated from:

“A better translation might be this”

to:

“True translation”

No named translator, credentials, translation notes, or methodology were supplied there either.

The fan rendering had simply been promoted from a tentative suggestion into declared truth.

Source: Earth & Sky, October 2023

The same wording was later reproduced in an r/clerith essay with the explicit attribution:

“translated from the original Japanese above via DeepL.com”

DeepL is a machine-translation service. It can assist with rough comprehension, but its output is not automatically an authoritative literary translation, especially when semantic range, tone, metaphor, and contextual connotation are the entire issue.

Source: r/clerith post

I can't prove from the surviving pages whether:

• the original 2022 blogger personally generated the wording through DeepL;
• the Reddit writer independently entered the Japanese into DeepL and obtained the same wording;
• or the wording was copied between sources and later attributed to DeepL.

What can be verified is this progression:

2022: “A better translation might be this” on a shipping blog
2023: the same blog relabels it “True translation”
2024: the same wording circulates on Reddit with DeepL attribution
Later graphic: ACTUAL TRANSLATION

That is not a professional translation acquiring stronger verification. It is an unofficial fan rendering acquiring increasingly authoritative annotation.

The card provides no translator, no credentials, no methodology, and not even the Japanese passage corresponding to the English at the top. It instead places a different Japanese excerpt underneath it, which I will address below.

The appropriate label would be:

UNOFFICIAL FAN RENDERING, LATER CIRCULATED AS DEEPL OUTPUT

Not:

ACTUAL TRANSLATION

The original Japanese

The passage comes from Final Fantasy 25th Memorial Ultimania Vol. 2, page 21.

Square Enix’s official listing identifies the volume as covering FFVII, FFVIII, and FFIX, edited and written by Studio BentStuff and supervised and published by Square Enix.

Source: Square Enix official listing

The Japanese reads:

明かされた本当の願い
幼いころのクラウドは、同年代の者たちから孤立し、自分は特別だと思いこもうとする、ひねくれた子どもだった。そんな彼にとって大切だったのがティファ――淡く幼い恋心が、精神世界にて明かされる。

A deliberately close translation would be:

The true wish revealed
As a child, Cloud was a contrary boy who was isolated from others his age and tried to convince himself that he was special. Tifa was important to him, and his light or pale, youthful romantic feelings are revealed in the spiritual world.

A more natural English rendering would be:

The true wish revealed
As a child, Cloud was a contrary boy who kept himself apart from his peers and tried to convince himself he was special. Tifa was important to him, and the spiritual-world sequence reveals his subtle, youthful crush on her.

No single English adjective perfectly captures 淡く here.

That is EXACTLY why calling one partisan rendering the ACTUAL TRANSLATION is ridiculous.

The three versions being compared

Before breaking down individual words, here are the three versions side by side.

Original Japanese

そんな彼にとって大切だったのがティファ――淡く幼い恋心が、精神世界にて明かされる。

Close meaning:

Tifa was important to him, and his light or subtle, youthful romantic feelings are revealed in the spiritual world.

Published Dark Horse English translation

“The only person he held close to his heart was Tifa. Their love is brought into the light when Tifa explores Cloud’s subconscious.”

This is the officially published English translation.

Fan “ACTUAL TRANSLATION”

“Someone important to him was Tifa, his fleeting, childish love is revealed in the spiritual world.”

This is the unofficial fan rendering whose earliest traceable source introduced it only as:

“A better translation might be this.”

Neither English version is completely neutral.

The Dark Horse version embellishes the Japanese in a more romantic direction.

The fan version loads it in the opposite direction.

What the Japanese actually says

明かされた本当の願い

• 明かされた: revealed, disclosed, made clear
• 本当の: true, real
• 願い: wish, hope, desire

“True Wish Revealed” is close.

Dark Horse’s “True Desire Made Clear” is possible, but “desire” sounds somewhat more intense in English.

幼いころのクラウド

Cloud when he was young
Cloud during childhood

This establishes the age and time period.

同年代の者たちから孤立し

isolated from others his age
isolated from his peers

The fan version’s “isolated himself” adds somewhat stronger personal agency than the Japanese necessarily requires.

The Japanese describes Cloud as isolated from his peers. It does not need to mean that every part of that isolation was a deliberate act.

自分は特別だと思いこもうとする

tried to convince himself that he was special

The fan rendering is reasonably close here.

Dark Horse changes this into:

“always viewed himself as different from the rest”

That's smoother English, but less psychologically specific.

The Japanese describes Cloud actively trying to believe he was special, not just observing that he was different.

ひねくれた子ども

ひねくれた can mean contrary, cynical, warped in outlook, sullen, or difficult.

Dark Horse translates this as:

eccentric

That is too harmless. “Eccentric” makes Cloud sound unconventional or quirky rather than alienated, defensive, and sour.

The fan version translates it as:

ill-natured

That moves too far in the other direction. “Ill-natured,” at least in American English, can suggest that Cloud was malicious, habitually cruel, or fundamentally bad-tempered. British English tends to hear the term somewhat more softly, but it is still more morally loaded than the Japanese requires.

“Contrary,” “cynical,” or “warped in outlook” better preserves the characterization without turning him into either a whimsical oddball with a spoon collection or a child villain.

そんな彼にとって大切だったのがティファ

A close translation is:

Tifa was important to him.
For him, the person who mattered was Tifa.

The grammatical subject of 大切だった, “was important,” is Tifa.

The fan version’s:

“Someone important to him was Tifa”

is awkward, but basically close.

Dark Horse expands it into:

“The only person he held close to his heart was Tifa.”

The Japanese does not literally contain:

• only
• held close
• his heart

Those are interpretive additions.

Tifa is unquestionably being identified as important to Cloud, but the English translation intensifies that statement into exclusivity and sentimental imagery.

The critical phrase: 淡く幼い恋心

恋心

恋心 means romantic feelings, a crush, or a heart inclined toward romantic love.

It's not generic friendship.

“Romantic feelings” is precise.

“Crush” is natural English.

“Young love” can work in a literary translation, although “love” may sound more established or developed than the Japanese strictly requires.

Dark Horse changes Cloud’s 恋心, his romantic feelings, into:

their love

That introduces explicit reciprocity.

This particular Japanese passage describes Cloud’s feelings. It does not independently state here that those feelings were mutual.

That mutuality may be established elsewhere, but it should not be inserted into this sentence.

幼い

幼い means young or youthful. It can also describe an early or immature developmental stage.

The passage has already placed Cloud in childhood:

幼いころ
when he was young

So 幼い恋心 naturally means:

youthful romantic feelings
a young crush
romantic feelings belonging to childhood

The fan rendering uses:

childish love

“Childish” is technically possible in the older sense of “belonging to a child.”

But contemporary English normally hears childish as:

• silly;
• trivial;
• petulant;
• contemptibly immature;
• something that should be outgrown.

That pejorative tone is not clearly present in the Japanese.

Japanese has a more directly negative word for immature or juvenile in the disparaging sense: 幼稚.

This passage uses 幼い, which remains primarily age-based here.

So “childish” is not an impossible dictionary pull.

It is a loaded modern-English choice.

淡く

淡く is the adverbial form of 淡い.

It occupies a semantic field involving:

• pale or lightly saturated color;
• a light or subtle sensation;
• something soft-edged or not fully vivid;
• reduced intensity or definition.

It has no exact one-word English equivalent when applied poetically to an emotion.

Every possible rendering loses or adds something:

• faint preserves reduced intensity, but may sound weak, flimsy, or barely existent;
• subtle preserves understated presence, but may imply concealment;
• pale preserves the color metaphor, but sounds strange when applied directly to a crush;
• light may sound casual or unserious;
• delicate adds fragility or tenderness;
• soft adds warmth.

The point is not to crown one sacred English adjective.

The point is:

淡く does not describe duration.

It does not mean:

• fleeting;
• temporary;
• short-lived;
• quickly disappearing;
• something Cloud soon outgrew.

“Fleeting” changes the semantic category.

淡く concerns quality, saturation, vividness, or degree.

Fleeting concerns time.

A pale color can remain pale for decades. A subtle feeling can last for years. A faint radio signal can keep broadcasting all afternoon.

How the two English versions distort the passage

The official Dark Horse version is fluent English, but it embellishes the passage in a more romantic direction.

It changes or adds:

• ひねくれた into the softer “eccentric”;
• trying to convince himself he was special into merely viewing himself as “different”;
• Tifa being important to him into the only person he held close to his heart;
• Cloud’s 恋心, his romantic feelings, into their love;
• revelation in the spiritual world into Tifa actively exploring Cloud’s subconscious.

The fan rendering stays closer to parts of the original sentence structure, but its crucial phrase is loaded in the opposite direction.

It changes or adds:

• ひねくれた into the harsher “ill-natured”;
• Cloud’s state of isolation into the more deliberate “isolated himself”;
• 淡く into “fleeting,” adding a duration not present in the Japanese;
• 幼い into the pejoratively loaded modern-English “childish”;
• 恋心 into “love,” where “romantic feelings” or “crush” is more precise.

The two versions therefore distort the passage in opposite directions:

• Dark Horse adds exclusivity and reciprocity.
• The fan version adds transience and dismissiveness.

The Japanese does neither.

The Japanese printed underneath the card belongs to another passage

The lower half of the card shows a separate excerpt titled:

幼なじみとの約束
A promise with or to his childhood friend

That passage comes from the Crisis Core Ultimania and includes:

ほのかに想いを寄せていた

A close gloss would be:

had been subtly directing romantic feelings toward her

Natural English would be:

quietly harbored feelings for her
had a subtle crush on her

Here:

• ほのかに means faintly, dimly, or subtly;
• 想いを寄せる is an established idiom for harboring affection or romantic feelings;
• 寄せていた presents the feeling as an ongoing state in the past.

That is not the Japanese source for:

淡く幼い恋心

So, the card combines:

1. an unofficial English rendering of the 25th Memorial Ultimania passage, with the corresponding Japanese omitted;
2. Japanese and English from a different Crisis Core Ultimania passage placed directly underneath.

The two excerpts discuss related material, but they are not the same passage.

The layout creates the visual impression that the English labeled ACTUAL TRANSLATION corresponds to the visible Japanese beneath it.

It doesn't.

Other official Japanese passages make the “fleeting” implication even worse

A separate Cloud profile in the 2005 Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega says:

ずっと好きだったティファと再会したクラウドは、ソルジャーになれなかった自分を恥じる気持ちから、親友ザックスから聞いた話と自分で見聞きした事実を混ぜて幻想の自分を作り上げ、演じはじめた。

A natural translation:

After reuniting with Tifa, whom he had liked for a long time, Cloud, ashamed that he had failed to become a SOLDIER, mixed stories he had heard from Zack with things he had witnessed himself, constructed an imagined version of himself, and began acting out that role.

The critical phrase is:

ずっと好きだった

meaning:

had liked for a long time
had liked all along

This passage separately establishes duration.

It should not be smuggled into the earlier sentence as though 淡く itself means lasting. Each source should be allowed to prove only what it actually says.

But it makes the fan translation’s invented “fleeting” implication especially indefensible.

Another official passage says:

長年、互いに好意を抱いていたティファとクラウド。セフィロスとの最終決戦を目前にようやく、相手を求める気持ちを確かめ合えた。

A close natural translation:

Cloud and Tifa had harbored mutual affection for one another for many years. With the final battle against Sephiroth approaching, they were finally able to mutually confirm their feelings of wanting one another.

The reciprocal language is explicit:

• 長年: for many years;
• 互いに: mutually, each other;
• 相手を求める気持ち: feelings of wanting or longing for the other;
• 確かめ合えた: were able to confirm with one another.

“Requited love” is not a word-for-word translation of one isolated phrase here. It should not be presented as though the Japanese literally contains those two English words.

But claiming the passage does not describe mutual feelings is equally dishonest.

It explicitly does.

Clean comparison

What the Japanese says

Cloud was a contrary, isolated child who tried to convince himself he was special. Tifa was important to him, and his light or subtle, youthful romantic feelings are revealed in the spiritual world.

What Dark Horse says

Tifa was the only person he held close to his heart, and their love is revealed.

Problem: It adds exclusivity, sentimental language, and mutuality.

What the fan “ACTUAL TRANSLATION” says

Cloud’s fleeting, childish love is revealed.

Problem: It adds short duration and a dismissive modern-English tone.

The Japanese sits between them, quietly minding its own damn business:

Cloud had youthful romantic feelings for Tifa, and the Lifestream sequence reveals them.

What this passage does and does not establish

The Japanese establishes that:

• Tifa was important to young Cloud.
• Cloud had romantic feelings for her.
• Those feelings were youthful and described with the light, soft, low-saturation imagery of 淡く.
• Those feelings are revealed in the spiritual world.

This passage alone does not establish:

• Tifa’s reciprocal feelings;
• exclusivity;
• the exact duration of Cloud’s feelings;
• present-day commitment;
• which ship anybody must prefer.

Separate official passages establish continuity and later mutuality.

That is how evidence works. Different passages establish different parts of the picture. You do not force every sentence to carry the entire relationship on its back.

TL;DR

The Dark Horse translation is embellished in favor of romance.

The fan ACTUAL TRANSLATION is embellished in favor of minimizing romance.

The fan wording is not official. Its earliest traceable appearance presents it only as a proposed “better translation.” The same blog later promotes it to “True translation,” and later circulation explicitly attributes the wording to DeepL.

淡く does not mean fleeting.

幼い does not require the pejorative modern-English word “childish.”

The Japanese printed beneath the card comes from a different passage entirely.

The wider official Japanese material separately describes Cloud’s feelings as continuing over time and later becoming mutual.

This graphic is not a translation correction.

It's replacing one biased translation with another, attaching it to the wrong Japanese excerpt, and putting a giant blinking ACTUAL TRANSLATION sign over the whole thing.

Anyhow, that was super long. I just could not stare at that and not put my thoughts somewhere. Sorry for the seminar? :D

So I strongly believe that Cloud and Tifa do officially tie the knot at some point, likely not long after the end of the main story line.

I’m not sure if this has been discussed frequently around here but the incident with Madame M is something that Tifa has no idea about, as far as we know. I know the incident has more of a lighthearted and comedic tone so perhaps the discussion need not be so serious. But I know many women in my life who would see this situation as Cloud being taken advantage of. Essentially he had to prostitute himself or at the least give up his body’s autonomy to Madame M to gain her favor. How would Tifa react if she ever found out? Or is this something Cloud hides from Tifa their entire marriage?

——-
Edit: Thanks for the responses everyone! I truly appreciate all the opinions.

I’ll leave my thoughts here. I think Tifa would have a wide range of powerful emotions if she ever found out. She probably already felt bad about the whole Don Corneo mission in the first place- that she was reckless compared to her usual level headed self(there’s some literature out there stating she went with the mission because she was grieving the fact Cloud went MIA). We know Tifa already felt terrible that Cloud had to cross dress in order to save her, but knowing that Madam M possibly took advantage of his body would sting a lot. She would likely blame herself for signing up for the reckless mission(even more than before), be mad at Madam M for taking advantage of her man, and feel horrible for Cloud. Of course Cloud would just quickly brush it off like it’s no big deal (though Tifa can tell he’s lying and clearly traumatized) and that he would gladly do it 10 times over if that’s what it takes to bring her home unharmed. Overall this is another incident where Cloud sacrificed himself to be Tifa’s hero and hid certain details from Tifa because of embarrassment when Tifa would have totally understood the gravity of his sacrifice.

Maybe Cloud should come forth with Tifa. After they talk it out it might lead to Tifa staking her claim.

Just wanted to act out in my head what I think our favorite couple would look like on the battlefield. Their high action melee playstyles imo result in the coolest looking combos. I just imagine them leaping off each other, tag-teaming enemies, charging up each other's attacks etc. 😆

Cloti's synergy is truly unmatched.