For the last year, I’ve been enjoying a particular type of binge-watch: the “movie” version of JRPG video games, which collect all cutscenes and full-motion videos to turn the clunky, getting rid of grinding-heavy and repetitive gameplay of those games into approximately 10 hours of mindless, but not STUPID entertainment. The gateway title was Kingdom Hearts, which--I became convinced after watching the ‘movie’ of all chapters--was some Myth-of-Er-like philosophical fable (it’s more than light! keyblade! friends!). I’ve been plowing through Square Enix and other titles ever since, without ever touching a controller.
You see, as much as I love video games as a visual-arts genre, I am terrible at them. My last attempt was with the Switch version of Dragon Quest XI last fall: after 4 hours of gameplay getting stuck at a level-8 boss, I threw the towel and texted the man I had started seeing “I keep grinding just to get one-shot.” He thought I was being sexual. I was just frustrated with my inept party a mute swordsman I named BABY and a blue-haired thief named Eric. To me, the strongest JRPG movie, so far, is Final Fantasy X.
I did play it in the Year of the Lord 2002, developing a puerile crush on the jock-like protagonist Tidus (Tee-dus? Tie-dus? unclear!). I liked his surfer’s tan, his frosted tips, and his boy-band-friendly masculinity! What’s more, the female protagonist wore a nice, two-piece kimono featuring detached sleeves in a white-to-pink gradient and a yellow obi had a cool set of moves--I’ve always been partial to ice and thunder-based spells, they look good on camera, especially when they take the semblances of a bodacious ice goddess or a unicorn.
JRPGs love patterns: you always have motley crew of typified characters who have to retrieve some precious items or activate crystals to defeat the presumed main enemy but, 3/4 way through, you realize that you’ve been fooled and a supposed ally turns out to be a big piece of shit and the day-1 enemy is just a medium-sized villain; in parallel to that, the player character discovers some unsettling truth about their past and shacks ups with the protagonist of the opposite sex, right around the “big revelation” mark.
I am pleased to report that Final Fantasy X hit all those spots, but that did not make the binge-watching a snoozefest. “Just realized if you split this up into approximately 1 hour long episodes, you've got yourself a damn fine Netflix Original Series :)” said commenter Dirk Diggler under the movie marathon video I used.
Final Fantasy likes dystopia --teen militiae in FFVIII, ecoterrorists in FFVII-- but the one of Final Fantasy X is unique in that it is by no means futuristic and, on a surface level, completely tech-averse. You live in a world named Spira where people believe that a calamity named Sin, a whale-like monster, exists because technology had been conducive to hubris, and hence, Sin was their punishment and it would exist, in some capacity or another, until they “atone”. The planet is ruled by a theocracy in the name of “Yevon.” Summoners are a healer/priest hybrid that can summon cool creatures and, by completing the pilgrimage, they can unlock a power that allows them to defeat Sin.
The fact that it comes back cyclically is chalked to the need to keep atoning. Quite conveniently, your character, the twink-like Tidus, comes from a Coruscant-like city named Zanarkand which, allegedly, had been destroyed by Sin itself 1000 years prior to the game’s events, so he is the ideal outsider that allows other characters to provide explainers that allow for world-building. While navigating his new land he crosses the path of ingenue-like Yuna, a summoner from Yevon royalty who wants to complete the pilgrimage to defeat Sin. As per the rpg/anime diktat, she is fragile, bashful, but with a will made of steel. She needs a whole army of “guardians”, who round out the cast: a blue furry (you always need an animal) a sexy, cold witch (a tsundere), a failed athlete who is also a religious fundamentalist, an older Samurai who had been around the block before (a daddy, both in a paternal and in a sexual sense), and a happy-go-lucky, childlike girl.
“Let’s level up and unlock achievements to beat the baddie” is a tried-and-true plot device, as it seamlessly propels the plot forward. Yet, Final Fantasy X excels in drama, both among characters and between characters and their world view. When you have to spend time grinding so you can finally beat “Sin Spawn XYZ,” or when, as a tween, you just soldier through the game to see if the couple you ship will finally *kiss,* you’re not going to savor the character interactions that enrich the enjoyable, but predictable plot. The protagonists both live in their fathers’ shadow. Tidus’s father was kind of an asshole who teased him about being a crybaby but disappeared when he was 7, being teleported in the same world the way his son would 10 years later. What’s more, whenever his father was around, Tidus’s mother would neglect her own son. So when his father was lost at sea, Tidus was happy about it. But he might die,” his bereaved mother told him. He was fine with it. “Do you hate him so?” she asked him. “If he dies, you'll never be able to tell him how much you hate him.”
Throughout the game, he is taunted by memories of his father, who, even in dreams, mocks him relentlessly. To make matters worse, we soon learn that Tidus’s father had become Sin, so our protagonist is torn between his childhood hatred of him, his need to prove himself to him, and his allegiance to his new friends, who are set out to temporarily destroy Sin. Yuna the female protagonist shares a similarly heavy burden, in that she is the daughter of the last person who defeated Sin and has to live up to the expectation that her lineage and her choice to follow her father’s footsteps.
She is not the only summoner, and whenever she runs into one of her peers, they’re very eager to make remarks about nepotism and her inherent frailty —early in the game, she does have many fainting spells. Yuna has a universal-level burden: she knows her quest is a suicide mission, she knows the people of Spira rely on her, which forces her to always smile (very waspy of her) and make burdensome sacrifices, including getting engaged to a level-100 religious fanatic. “I've... learned how to smile... Even when I'm feeling sad,” is one of her most famous quotes.
Tidus’s and Yuna’s cackles did become internet-famous and, when taken out of context, they sound like a byproduct of my hero Tommy Wiseau. Yet, its cringeworthy nature is fully justified, as the scene takes place shortly after Tidus learned the truth about his father, while Yuna is actively marching to the gallows.
Mostly, though, what I loved about my FFX marathon was a deeper fascination of FFX’s own religion. The online discourse has been very fond of Gilead or the pagan religion of Midsommar, but People in Spira have it way worse: They seem to live in your run-of-the-mill fundamentalist cult, where common greetings include the phrase “praise be to Yevon,” generally, prayer-like activities abound. The leaders of each area are backed by temples, which also have militant arms. They preach a lifestyle of atonement claiming that Sin will go a way for good if people do atone but, at the end of the day, it’s a death cult in the name of a perceived greater good.
“Summoners challenge the bringer of death, Sin, and die doing so.
Guardians give their lives to protect their summoner,” says Auron, the oldest and wisest of the party. “The fayth are the souls of the dead. Even the maesters of Yevon are unsent. Spira is full of death...Only Sin is reborn, and then only to bring more death. It is a cycle of death, spiraling endlessly.”
Cheerful! But you do really end up rooting for your characters to break the cycle, especially because religious fundamentalism is not as far-flung as teen elite soldiers fighting against a band of witches fond of “doing the time warp,” while Final Fantasy VII’s environmental parable (big, bad, industrial complex sucking the lifeblood out of the planet) had already been exhausted by Miyazaki one decade prior. Oh, forgot to mention (and I am going to leave it here) that the romance element almost feels like a pleasant incidental element.
If you’re more restrained than me and want to enjoy it as a series, user "Hawk of Battle" offered the following timestamps
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