On The Way to a Smile

[BrianUrinal]

Have any of you read the 'On The Way to a Smile' novellas set between FFVII and Advent Children, they make for an interesting read and really bridge the gap and help make Advent Children make some more sense.

I recently set myself a challenge to complete every Final Fantasy title (inc. spinoffs) and when I'd completed Final Fantasy VII I came across this website:

http://xcomprandomness.co.uk/ff7novels/

Which was a useful tool in my quest as it has translations of all of these stories which I believe were mostly only released in Japan. The first episode 'Case of Denzel' has even been made into a short OVA which was fun to watch.

I think my favourite installment is 'Case of Nanaki' which tells of Red XIII's time looking after orphaned bear cubs and the turmoil in his mide between his identity as man or beast.

Let me know what you guys think.

 

[Nanaki BH]

I just found that site the other day and started reading. I read The Case of Shinra first and it totally made me see Rufus in a different way. Actually, I even see President Shinra in a different way now. The novel makes them both seem way more easy to sympathize with. It's nice, though, since we didn't get that sort of look into Rufus' own thoughts in the game.

 

[BrianUrinal]

Yeah after reading 'Case of Shinra' and watching Advent Children, Rufus seems like a good guy now. It was cool to see the story from his point of view, and anything with more Tseng in gets thumbs up from me.

I would seriously recommend reading these to anyone who is a Final Fantasy VII fan, I emailed the translator telling him how grateful I was as otherwise none of us would have the chance to read them and there'd be a big chunk missing from my Final Fantasy VII experience. It's the equivelent of somebody finally managing to emulate Before Crisis over here, which incidentally has the script uploaded on the same website, not the same as playing I know, but it's one step closer.

http://xcomprandomness.co.uk/ff7novels/