Yeah, you've got me there...It is called Final Fantasy, after all. Still, most things in the series make some sort of logical sense or can at least be explained in some way. What Seifer does just...doesn't make sense. He stands still and cleaves Odin in half with a sword that's nowhere near as large as Odin himself is...Well, I guess it's about as logical as Cloud and co. beating the WEAPONS using swords and bullets that are about 1/10000th their size.

Yeah, he must've done something, I just don't see what he could possibly have done. He was in the exact same position before and after the attack. As amusing as the idea of Odin impaling himself on Seifer's Gunblade is, you're correct in saying that he wouldn't have been bisected. I mean, I guess he could've...parried Odin's Zantetsuken in a way that made it cut him in half? No, now I'm just grasping at straws...

Yeah, but they were fated to defeat Ultimecia. Regardless of how much more powerful than them she was, the party was going to emerge victorious in that battle. However, they weren't fated to defeat Seifer or anyone other than Ultimecia, really. The first battle against Edea proved that they could still lose a battle if their opponent was superior to them. Fate didn't make it so that they went undefeated until they fought Ultimecia, it just kept them alive.

Yeah, but Kuja was messing around with them (or at least he purposefully avoided using Ultima). The thing is, if Seifer had an attack that would instantly annihilate the party, I don't think he would've hesitated to use it. It couldn't have been "too much for them," because getting hit once with a one-hit-kill attack results in...well...getting killed. What's more, the party didn't appear at all fatigued after the battle. If Seifer had used a version of Zantetsuken on them, don't you think they at least would've appeared somewhat winded? It just doesn't seem logical to assume that Seifer had a one-hit-kill move at his disposal, yet he refused to use it against Squall.

Yeah, it's true that the kanji characters are the same as the ones that appear during Odin's animation, but don't those characters say "Zantetsuken" themselves? That's what I always thought, anyway.

Is Odin really that big?
Plus, did Seifer cut Odin's horse in half too...? I can't tell.

Well, I'm still subsribing to my idea of the "fatal strike" clash cliche. Seifer was quicker on the draw with his blade.
Plus it looks like his sword changed position when the kenji appear.

Point.

Well we know he never did use the move on them so they don't have to appear wounded from something they never got hit with.
As for why he never used it, same reason kuja never used Ultima. You're on a real stretch saying Kuja was playing around. He said right before the battle "time to die, everyone!" and he was in a state of absolute nihilism after what happened on Terra. THere's nothing to suggest he was playing around anymore than Seifer. Both Seifer and Kuja seemed deadly serious.

Speaking of attacks that would own the party but never were used, what about Edea's "freeze" spell? She held the whole party at her mercy but miraculously never used this ownage spell again.



斬鉄剣 = Zantetsuken "cutting iron sword."

The extra kenji for when Seifer kills Odin

返し = 'return" or "reverse."

Nope. That was an exaggeration.

True...I mean, we don't know how much time passed when the screen flashed white. For all we know, a few seconds could've lapsed during which Seifer simply proved himself quicker to the draw. Come to think of it, upon watching the video again, I've realized that a fairly significant portion of time passes when the screen flashes. I suppose Seifer could potentially have done something during that time, but I'm not sure what. I mean, the fact remains that, though he had enough time to act, his position didn't change at all during the "attack" itself.


I don't mean that Kuja was fooling around in the same way that, say, Sephiroth would fool around. Kuja was definitely taking the fight seriously. However, he did "hold back" in the sense that he didn't use Ultima right away. Instead, he waited until he was on his last leg and, himself, on the verge of death. If he really wanted everyone to die as soon as possible, I think he could've just used Ultima right off the bat. He was definitely using his most powerful attacks (except, of course, Ultima) to their greatest potential, but the fact remains that he waited until the end of the fight to pull out the really big guns.

I don't know...I like to think that it was one of those "They broke free with their sheer determination" things that you see all the time in Shounen anime. By Anime Logic, stuff like telekinesis and Stop Spells can be countered simply by out-willing the caster. It's demonstrated in good Shounen manga like Rurouni Kenshin as well as terrible Shounen manga like Naruto. As an alternative explanation, perhaps the fact that the party, themselves, use Magic offered them some sort of protection against Edea's Stop Spell. Maybe their GF's had something to do with it.

So, basically, "Zantetsuken" itself translates to "cutting iron sword." It's the same thing, really.

And maybe Seifer planned on using his Zantetsuken Reverse on Squall but never got the chance due to Gilgamesh showing up?

Yeah. But my original point was that calling what Seifer did to Odin the "Zantetsuken Reverse", as in some made up technique, is simply fan speculation. It can easily be interpretted as Seifer just cut Odin up and they put the keni up as always with Odin but added the "reverse" symbols because it was Odin who got sliced and diced, instead of the enemy.

Now that we've discussed this over MSN, Nik, I think you were about right. Seifer probably just used a particularly strong regular attack, but he used it before Odin could use Zantetsuken. I mean, as far as we can tell, a significant amount of time passed between Odin's death and Gilgamesh's arrival, so I really don't think that Seifer just didn't have the chance to use this "one-hit-kill" technique on Squall and co. To be honest with you, Seifer, at that point, seemed like he was going for the kill at all costs. If he had a technique that could instantly kill his opponents, he would've used it as soon as possible. He wouldn't have waited for around ten minutes before using it.

Besides, getting hit with a sword in gameplay and in the storyline are, as we said on AIM, two totally different things. Whereas a basic sword slash in gameplay will cause around 4000-5000 damage at the most, getting slashed across the chest in the storyline will pretty much always result in death. So I think that the most likely explanation for Odin's death is that Seifer, as you put it, simply hit Odin with his Gunblade before Odin could hit him. As for why he was bisected from top to bottom...err...We could just write that off as a plothole. I really don't see how Seifer could, realistically, slice something of Odin's size in half with his Gunblade regardless of how fast or strong he was. The fact remains, Odin was physically larger than the Gunblade, so one attack couldn't possibly have cleaved him in two. It was probably just exaggerated for gameplay purposes.

That's fair enough. But now I also have another feat I think puts Seifer above Squall: Seifer survived a hit from Gilgamesh and the Zantetsuken. Notice that Gilgamesh never actually hits someone with any of his swords like Odin did. He just picks it up, waves it, and the energy/wind from it does the killing. When he confronted Seifer, he did an especially powerful version of the insta-kill Zantetsuken strike that only put Seifer down for lik ea minute at most. After that minute, Seifer literally sprang up in one quick movement and was running around.

Well...I chalk that up to the fact that Gilgamesh doesn't actually make contact with his sword or strike Seifer in any way that would, storyline-wise, kill him without fail. For example, getting cleaved in half by a giant sword would kill someone regardless of how tough they are. However, getting blown away by a massively powerful gust of wind is, as far as the storyline is concerned, perfectly survivable so long as you have the appropriate determination. Obviously, Gilgamesh's attack is an insta-kill move gameplay-wise, but if a particularly strong creature got hit with it in the storyline, I think that they could survive quite easily.

Clearly, Seifer has incredible determination, but again, a lot of that could be attributed to the fact that he has nothing left to cling to except for his sorceress. Considering he'd just lost everything to Squall and his friends, and was currently in the process of fighting tooth and nail to protect his last remaining shred of hope, I don't think he's going to go down quite as easily. Once again, I consider that the result of an adrenaline rush of sorts on Seifer's part. His brain knows that he his choices are now limited to "fight," "run," or "die." He knew that he couldn't overpower Squall and co., but he manages to summon the determination to get back on his feet and run. It was, quite literally, a "fight or flight" instinct. At first, Seifer chose to fight, but once that proved to be a terrible decision, he made a break for it.

Well he had no reason to stay there and fight Squall. He was there to get Rinoa to Adel and Rinoa had walked away.

Also, from a storyline perspective, Gilgamesh never used his attack on another character so it be hard to compare unless we take into consideration the game mechanics.