I’ve been playing through Final Fantasy VII in Japanese, and I’m having a good time pointing out little nuances that I didn’t notice when I originally played the game in English 20 years ago.


Last time, we accompanied Aeris as she dressed Cloud up like a girl so they could trick a guy. This time, we’re also going to have a long soliloquy on the subject of some underwear. The 1990s, man! Video games were just cuckoo for underwear.

We’re also going to attack Shinra Tower, meet Sephiroth, escape the city of Midgar, and learn about Cloud’s past. And there’s a part about—well, I’ll be here all day if I start listing the things with which this video is jam-packed.


I used pizza in the headline because pizza is very important to me. Though now that I have you here: did you know that Aeris has a nickname for Cloud in Japanese that she uses consistently throughout the game, and that that nickname is a reference to the very first meaningful conversation they ever had? That’s really cute. In English, she sometimes calls him “Bodyguard,” which is also a reference to that same conversation, though in Japanese, it’s a little bit different, and it’s sweet as heck.



Also in this video, I reference George Bernard Shaw, we talk about pizza, and we engage in some profound speculation regarding a toilet. If you ask me, that’s the very definition of “something for everybody.”

You can catch up with the whole series on this YouTube playlist, by the way.