Last Order -Final Fantasy VII-

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Last Order: Final Fantasy VII

Directed by	Morio Asaka
Produced by	Yoshinori Kitase
Written by	Kazushige Nojima
Starring	Kenichi Suzumura as Zack (voice) and others
Music by	Takeharu Ishimoto
Distributed by	Square Enix Madhouse
Release date(s)	September 14, 2005
Running time	25 minutes
Language	Japanese
IMDb profile

Last Order -Final Fantasy VII- (ラストオーダー -ファイナルファンタジーVII-, Rasuto Ōdā -Fainaru Fantajī VII-^?) is an addition to the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children film and part of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. It is an OVA (Original Video Animation) that was released with the "Ultimate Edition" of the movie (Advent Pieces: Limited). It is an anime rendition of two flashbacks that took place in the game. One details events from five years before the game took place, revolving around the Nibelheim scenario that focused on Zack, Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart and Sephiroth. The other involves Zack and Cloud on the run from Shin-Ra. The anime cuts back and forth between these two flashbacks, linked by the Turk commander Tseng's reflection on the Nibelheim events. Last Order also forms the basis of the Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- PSP game, and serves as a tie-in with the mobile phone game Before Crisis -Final Fantasy VII-, as several of the game's playable Turk characters appear as minor characters, with some even getting spoken lines.

1 Plot
2 Unseen epilogue
3 Deviations from the original story
4 Credits
- 4.1 Staff
- 4.2 Cast
5 External links

[edit] Plot

One year before Final Fantasy VII begins, former SOLDIER 1st Class, Zack, is able to break free of his confinement within Shin-Ra Company, Zack accompanied Sephiroth, Shin-Ra's elite SOLDIER, in the investigation of a malfunctioning mako reactor. During that mission, he bore witness to Sephiroth's descent into madness and the merciless slaughter of the village at Sephiroth's hands.

Zack

Cloud Strife

Though he survived that massacre, he and his friend, Cloud Strife — Final Fantasy VII's main protagonist and a native of Nibelheim — were taken captive when Shin-Ra officials arrived to round up the few survivors and cover up the tragedy to prevent their name from being sullied. Professor Hojo, the Head of Shin-Ra's Scientific Research Division, decided to use Zack, Cloud and the other apprehended survivors in an experiment to test his Jenova Reunion Theory, but after four years of stolen freedom, Zack has escaped from Hojo's lab and taken Cloud with him.

They quickly slip away from Nibelheim, with the intent being to return to Midgar, the heart of Shin-Ra's empire and home of Zack's girlfriend, Aerith Gainsborough. However, Shin-Ra orders their elite espionage and assassination division, the Turks, as well as regular military units to find, and, if necessary, eliminate the two escapees. Yet Tseng, the leader of the Turks, is hesitant to take Zack and Cloud's freedom from them a second time. Conscience-leaden and wracked with conflicting emotions, he orders his subordinates to capture them alive if at all possible.

With Zack and Cloud approaching the end of their year-long trek back to Midgar and the pursuit of the two escapees building to its head, Tseng reflects back on the events that have led to this situation before departing with his subordinates to intercept Cloud and Zack along the last leg of their journey. It is here, on a bluff within sight of Midgar, that fate will take a tragic, unexpected turn, and the events of Final Fantasy VII will begin.

[edit] Unseen epilogue

Shin-Ra soldiers—acting on their own, despite orders to await the Turks' arrival—kill Zack, who falls in battle due to a wound he took in Cloud's defense. However, they spare Cloud's life, noting him to already be in a heavily-impaired state and expecting that he will shortly expire anyway. They lie about the outcome of this situation, stating that Cloud escaped while Zack was killed in his resistance.

Cloud manages to regain consciousness shortly thereafter, though still highly disoriented. He reaches Midgar, taking Zack's Buster Sword and the SOLDIER uniform he gave him. There, he's reunited with Tifa Lockhart, and—after his recovery—she convinces him to take a job for AVALANCHE, the underground resistance movement fighting to topple the Shin-Ra Company. Final Fantasy VII then begins.

[edit] Deviations from the original story

The following are proposed deviations from the original story as seen in Final Fantasy VII. It is suggested that these are possible due to the fact that the film is canon while the game is displaying Cloud's jagged memories.

In Final Fantasy VII, Tifa's father is found already dead inside the mako reactor. In Last Order, he is found dying outside the reactor.
In Final Fantasy VII, when Tifa is injured by Sephiroth, Zack just checks on her. In Last Order, they have a conversation before Zack enters the chamber.
In Last Order, Cloud and Sephiroth have additional dialogue during their confrontation not present in the game.
In Final Fantasy VII, when Cloud charges Sephiroth with Zack's Buster Sword, Sephiroth turns in time to be stabbed in his stomach. In Last Order, Sephiroth is unaware of Cloud's presence in Jenova's chamber until after he is stabbed through his lower back.
In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud is impaled upon Sephiroth's Masamune once. In Last Order, he is stabbed with the sword twice.
In the original story, when Sephiroth attempts to leave with Jenova's head, Cloud pursues him onto a catwalk that crosses over the heart of the Reactor, a wide shaft leading into the Lifestream below. In this depiction of events, Sephiroth quickly turns and runs his Masamune through Cloud. After being impaled by Sephiroth and held in the air above the Lifestream, Cloud pulls the blade out of his chest and uses it to fling Sephiroth into the Lifestream. In contrast, in the OVA, Cloud charges Sephiroth while he stands at the top of the stairs leading to Jenova's chamber, and is impaled a first time. Sephiroth then tosses him into Jenova's room and impales him upon his blade a second time, holding Cloud's severely wounded body above the shaft that leads to the Lifestream (retconned to be in Jenova's chamber instead of another room). In this retelling of events, Cloud grasps the blade of Sephiroth's sword and throws him into a wall (which crumples from the force of Sephiroth's impact) instead, and Sephiroth then decides to jump into the Lifestream of his own free will. It should be noted that in the game, when Cloud reflects on the last time he saw Sephiroth, he states that "Sephiroth went off searching for the Promised Land, so he could become the ruler of the planet... That was 5 years ago... He told me he wants to go to the Promised Land with his mother, Jenova." These changes are also present in Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII.
When fighting with Sephiroth in the Jenova chamber, Cloud is shown to have eyes glowing in a manner similar to so-called 'mako eyes', a sign of mako infusion. What exactly this suggests (and whether they're actually glowing or simply reflecting light) has been debated amongst fans.
In Final Fantasy VII, when Zack rushes Sephiroth, he is apparently defeated in one blow, or at the least, a very short period of time. In Last Order, he manages to trade several blows with Sephiroth over the course of 48 seconds before being bested. He is still ejected from Jenova's room and into a mako pod outside by Sephiroth's final blow, however.
In Last Order, after Cloud critically wounds Sephiroth and is moving Tifa to safety, she regains consciousness and speaks with him. In Final Fantasy VII, she does not. Instead, the dialogue seen in the OVA is spoken by Cloud and Tifa while they watch the flashback in the Lifestream. This is a plot hole, because in the game Tifa has no recollection of Cloud ever coming to Nibelheim 5 years ago, which is a key point to the story.
In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud is present during Sephiroth's attack on Nibelheim and is consequently knocked unconscious. He later recovers and rushes to the mako reactor after Zack has already gone in that direction. In Last Order, he discovers Nibelheim in flames along with Zack, and only goes to the reactor after scouring for injured civilians with Zangan. It is for this reason that he arrives at the reactor later than Zack in Last Order.
It had been previously speculated that the hidden scene on Disc 2 of Final Fantasy VII—accessible by visiting the Shinra Mansion's basement—happened only a few days before the opening events of the game's story. However, Before Crisis confirms that the two make their escape from Nibelheim a year before the opening events of Final Fantasy VII, and—as such—Turks recently added into continuity, yet not shown in the original Final Fantasy VII, are among Zack's pursuers.
In Last Order, Cloud and Zack are ambushed by Shin-Ra soldiers while hitchhiking to Midgar in a pickup truck. While the original game features the hitchhiking scenario, it does not feature the attack that Cloud and Zack suffer at that time. In the retelling of events, Zack is shot while taking a bullet meant for Cloud. This is speculated to have left him wounded and less able to defend himself when he and Cloud reach their fated destination: a bluff overlooking Midgar, where Zack is gunned down and killed.