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Every Final Fantasy is someone’s favourite, butFinal Fantasy 7ranks pretty highly for a lot of people, and with good reason. It is filled with a cast of memorable characters but even beyond that had a world whose core tenets were twisted by just how much you understood the lore and history of it.
Jenova is a great example of this. What even is she? Even calling them ‘she’ is a bit too forward considering they may not be anything resembling human life at all. Yet to both Sephiroth and Shinra, Jenova is seemingly essential, with them also deeply intertwined with the history of the Cetra, more commonly known as the Ancients. Let’s piece together the disparate aspects of Jenova’s identity to give you a clear picture of them.
Where Did Jenova Come From?
A rather philosophical point to get us started, but one essential to actually deciphering Jenova in any meaningful way. Within the game, much of what we are told about Jenova is crossed with the knowledge of the Cetra.Jenova was found by Shinra in a fossilised state and was thought to be the last surviving member of the Cetra people. With this knowledge, many characters' actions make a lot of sense.
However,Jenova was not a Cetra at all. In truth, we don’t actually know what Jenova is, but through the research of Professor Gast that can be found in Icicle Inn, we see that he later discovered with the help of Ifalna, a living Cetra, thatJenova was alien to the world of Gaia, and the being responsible for the extinction of the Cetra.
Rather than being anything natural of the planet, Jenova arrived on a comet, the one that caused the North Crater, and acted towards the Cetra like any parasite would - with destructive intent.
Seeing as Jenova is not definitely humanoid or even sentient, gendering them is a much more difficult process. For example, many call Jenova ‘she’, yet Ifalna calls them ‘it’ in reference to being a parasite.
Though aspects of the lore imply the Cetra themselves may have travelled from planet to planet with the Lifestream, Gast and Ifalna make it clear that Jenova has no relation to them. Plain and simply, Jenova is an alien with no known home anywhere amongst the stars.
Jenova’s Connection To The Ancients
With the awareness that Jenova is an alien parasite rather than another member of the Cetra, it brings their relationship into further examination. The decades of research performed by Shinra would lead us to believethe Cetra simply died out, quite possibly by the meteor at the North Crater or even the hands of humanity. The truth is of course much more insidious, with the being that arose from that meteor, Jenova, being the true cause of the extinction of the Cetra.
It is impossible to say what Jenova’s intent was in arriving on Gaia, in attacking the Cetra, or if there was even anything malicious in it. For all intents and purposes,Jenova may not even be sentient but instead acting out on basic instinct, an instinct that tells them to consume the life around them. Indeed, the meteor they arrived on may well have just been something they were coincidentally attached to, rather than a specific mode of transport.
Though Shinra would eventually see Jenova for different means,the Cetra and their Promised Landwere still immensely important to them.
An important question to ask then iswhy does Jenova look humanoid if they are an alien parasite?Key to this is actually part of why Shinra came to the conclusion that Jenova was a Cetra to begin with. You see, Jenova has the power to take on different forms. This is rarely explicitly said, but many times showcased. A primary example of this is how Cloud sees the many Sephiroth clones as Sephiroth himself due to the Jenova genes in all of them.
In this way, Jenova managed to very easily mislead the Cetra into approaching them, corrupting them with their cells, and turning them into monsters.
Realising Jenova to be a parasite rather than a lifeform that could be reasoned with, the Cetra set in motion a plan to defeat them. Though the means of which are unclear, they pushed back Jenova to the very spot they landed on Gaia, the North Crater. Here,Jenova was frozen in time, though still alive.
They were no longer a persistent threat to the Cetra, though fatal damage had already been done. The Cetra had no means of recovering their population, and humans eventually succeeded them as the most populous race of Gaia.
Shinra’s Usage Of Jenova
After their genocide of the Cetra people, Jenova lay dormant for approximately 2,000 years. Perfectly preserved, Shinra eventually located them in their efforts of industrial expansionism and saw them as a means to a brighter future. Jenova would be the means to bring about a future of boundless energy through the Cetra’s Promised Land and infinite control for Shinra.
To Shinra, Jenova was the last living Cetra, a key to the past that allowed full control over the Lifestream. Being thatthe Lifestream was already Shinra’s means to control the planetand its people, having direct control of it with a living Cetra would make them feasibly immortal. As such, Jenova was the first step in reviving the Cetra race to serve Shinra’s interests.
Sephiroth was the first victim of this research. Born naturally of professors Lucrecia Crescent and Hojo,Sephiroth was injected with cells of Jenova while in the womb. Hojo’s hope with this was that Sephiroth would grow to become a Cetra, or at the very least a human-Cetra hybrid. Though not strictly informed of this, Sephiroth was told that a woman known as Jenova was his mother, but that she had died during his birth. The same was done for Genesis and Angeal, fellow Soldiers alongside Sephiroth.
However, the trio eventually discovered their origins, with Sephiroth taking it the most personally. Under the belief that Jenova was a Cetra and that humanity had been the ones to cause their extinction,he burned Nibelheim to the ground, taking the head of Jenova with him. At this point in time, he was killed by Cloud after being pushed into the Lifestream, though Shinra saw this as another opportunity.
The cells of Jenova, they discovered, have a tendency to converge once separated. To this end, Hojo injected many of the survivors of the Nibelheim incident, Cloud amongst them, with Jenova genes. With Sephiroth in the Lifestream, he hoped this would cause all those with his shared cells to form a Reunion.
To that end, Shinra reclaimed Jenova’s headless body and brought it to their headquarters in Midgar for further research, and to ensure the success of the Reunion theory.
Sephiroth And Jenova’s Relationship
The great irony of Sephiroth is how despite his misunderstanding as to his heritage, that he was a descendant of the Cetra and needed to punish the vile humans for desecrating their bodies and history,he inadvertently enacted Jenova’s will anyway - to destroy all life.In becoming partially absorbed by the Lifestream, he retained some degree of consciousness while now being able to push his will to all those infected with Jenova’s genes.
In a rather ironic twist, Sephiroth kills Aerith for trying to stop him, despite Aerith herself being an actual Cetra.
From birth, Sephiroth was told Jenova was his mother, though not who the individual ‘Jenova’ actually was. From Shinra’s own understanding, Jenova was a Cetra, so upon making the discovery of his origins Sephiroth had no reason to doubt this reality since it was hidden from him in the first place. As such, his ‘mother’ became the reason and means on which to exact his revenge upon all of humanity.
To this end,he hoped to gather the Black Materia to summon a meteor to strike Gaia. This is rather specific and important as Jenova arrived on Gaia through a meteor and there is no denying the possibility that another meteor could bring more like them.
A core theme of Final Fantasy 7 is how much of Cloud’s own actions are driven by personal conviction to stop Sephiroth, and how much is just a consequence of the Jenova genes within him following Sephiroth’s Reunion. Yet simultaneously the same can be said of Sephiroth. His base ideals of destroying humanity are founded on a false premise, yet even with the awareness given to him by the Lifestream, he seeks to enact this genocide regardless.Is this truly his own plan, or Jenova subconsciously controlling him?
